Pittura infamante

[1] Popular subjects of pitture infamanti include traitors, thieves, and those guilty of bankruptcy or public fraud, often in cases where no legal remedy was available.

Commissioned by governments of city-states and displayed in public centers, pitture infamanti were both a form of "municipal justice" (or "forensic art"[2]) and a medium for internal political struggles.

Florentine law required the Podestà have such caricatures painted, and accompanied by verbal identification of those held in contempt of court for financial offenses (bad debt, bankruptcy, fraud, forgery, etc.).

For example, records support the use of "very unpleasant pictures" painted on cloths during the Hundred Years' War and the reign of King Louis XI of France, and – later – in England and north Germany.

[12] Pitture infamanti were the counterpoint of another contemporary form of secular, full-length portrait: uomini famosi ("famous men") or uomini illustri ("illustrious men"), which depicted figures from the Old Testament or Antiquity in a positive context, generally on the interior of private or civic buildings as moral exemplars.