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thesis entitled

PIERO DI COSIMO'S SIMONETTA VESPUCCI
A FANTASY PORTRAIT

 

presented by

MICHELLE WHARTON VANDERZANT

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M .A. Jegree in ART

MM

Major professor

 

Date 1 1-8-83

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PIERO DI COSIMO'S SIMONETTA VESPUCCI

 

A FANTASY PORTRAIT

BY

Michelle Wharton Vanderzant

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1983

ABSTRACT

PIERO DI COSIMO'S SIMONETTA VESPUCCI

 

A FANTASY PORTRAIT

BY

Michelle Wharton Vanderzant

Piero di Cosimo's Simonetta Vespucci is, like many of

 

his other paintings, problematic in its dating and subject
matter. Stylistic analysis of Piero's oeuvre suggests that
he painted it during the 14905. The portrait conforms to
the Quattrocento profile tradition, although its evocative
landscape is unique. The inscription "Simonetta Vespucci"
appears to be a later addition, and there is apparently no
basis for identifying this or any other painting as an
imaginary portrait of Simonetta Vespucci. Vasari's descrip-
tion of a "work by the hand of Piero, a very beautiful head
of Cleopatra, with an asp wound round her neck” recommends

the identification of the woman in Simonetta Vespucci as

 

CleOpatra. The painting is a fantasy portrait and probably
belongs to a category of profane images prevalent in the late
fifteenth century. Sixteenth century literary sources sug-
gest that such images were viewed in the bedroom and were be-

lieved to influence procreation.

AC KNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Webster Smith for his

guidance and assistance in the preparation of this thesis.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Page
IntrOduction. I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O 1
Chapter 1: A Suggested Date for Piero di Cosimo's
Simonetta Vespucci . . . . . . . . . 5
Chapter 2: Simonetta Vespucci A Quattrocento
Profile Portrait . . . . . . . . . . 19
Chapter 3: Imaginary Portraits of Simonetta
Vespucci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Chapter 4: Renaissance Images of Cleopatra . . . . 48

Chapter 5: The Fantasy Portrait in the Renaissance
HousehOId O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 61

Bibliography. 0 O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 80

iii

LI ST OF FIGURES

Figure l Simonetta Vespucci Piero di Cosimo

 

iv

I NTRODUC TI ON

Piero di Cosimo's Simonetta Vespucci as Cleopatra

 

(Figure l) is, like many of his other paintings, problematic
in its dating and subject matter. Measuring 57 by 42 centi-
meters and executed in tempera on panel, this painting may
well be identical with the "beautiful head of Cleopatra, with
an asp wound round her neck" mentioned by Vasari which he saw

in the house of Francesco da San Gallo.1

Until the early
part of the nineteenth century, the painting was in the pos-
session of the Vespucci family. In 1841, it was acquired
from the last member of the Vespucci family by M. Reiset,
director of the Louvre and well known connoisseur.2 The
Duke of Aumale purchased the painting from Reiset in 1879;

3 No record

it now hangs in the Musée Condé, Chantilly.
exists of a commission and aside from the portrait's beauty

and enigmatic appeal, no other facts can be brought to the

 

lGiorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculp;
tors, and Architects, trans., by Gaston Duc de Vere, Vol. IV
(London: Philip Lee Warner, 1913), p. 146.

 

2Louise M. Richter, Chantilly in History and Art (London:
John Murrary, 1913), p. 146.

3Francois Anatole Gruyer, Chantilly Musée Condé Notice des
Peintures (Paris: Braun and Clement, 1899), p. 21.

 

 

 

Figure l: Simonetta Vespucci Piero di Cosimo

 

understanding of the subject or its placement in Piero's
oeuvre.

Piero's fanciful profile portrait of a woman compels
and delights. A dramatic thundercloud frames the face, and
a snake coils around Simonetta's necklace seemingly striking
its own tail. The beauty of the woman dispells this threat-
ening atmosphere. Simonetta Vespucci is one of Piero's
eccentric fairy tales. Who is the woman? A portrait is a
presumed record of an individual's existence, yet this woman
appears to belong to an imaginary world.

Mina Bacci in her monographs on Piero di Cosimo has

 

summarized the scholarship on Simonetta Vespucci. The pro-
venance and attribution to Piero were established in the
nineteenth century. The portrait has been interpreted as
the death of Simonetta VeSpucci or Cleopatra. The inscrip-
tion is probably a later addition, perhaps by the Vespucci

family, and the date assigned Simonetta Vespucci has been

 

variously made between the extremes of 1480 (Knapp) and 1520
(Ragghianti). This range represents Piero's entire career.4

The purpose of this paper is to place Simonetta Vespucci

 

within the context of Piero di Cosimo's work, the Quattro-
cento portrait tradition, and what is known of the Renais-

sance household. Piero's eclectic style defies a precise

 

4See Mina Bacci, Piero di Cosimo (Milan: Bramante Editrice,
1966), p. 69, for a comprehensive bibliography on Simonetta
Vespucci.

 

 

 

chronology. I sought patterns in his paintings and grouped
works according to common themes and repeated motifs. Jean
Lipman in "The Florentine Profile Portrait in the Quattro-
cento," has established the formal aspects of profile por-

5

traits painted between 1450-1500. Simonetta Vespucci con-

 

forms to this tradition despite the imaginative landscape
background. The inscription "Simonetta Ianvensis Vespuccia"
has associated the portrait with the famous Florentine beauty
who was the Petrarchan mistress of Guiliano di Medici. The
legend of the "Bella Simonetta” popularized in the nineteenth
century led to the identification of a number of Quattrocento
paintings as imaginary portraits of Simonetta Vespucci.

What do these portraits have in common and if they were not
meant to be portraits of an actual individual, why were they
painted? Vasari's identification of a "beautiful head of
Cleopatra" by Piero raises the further question of the role
of the Egyptian queen in literature and painting during the
fifteenth century. The portrait is intimate in scale
suggesting that it might have been a household image. Was

it intended as something other than decoration? There is

no doubt that Piero celebrates feminine charms in this
beautiful portrait of a woman with a snake wrapped around

her neck.

 

5Jean Lipman, "The Florentine Profile Portrait in the Quat-
trocento," Art Bulletin 18 (March 1936): 54-102.

 

A Suggested Date for Piero di Cosimo's

Simonetta Vespucci

Piero di Cosimo (b. c. 1461, d. 1521) was artistically
active during a period of great stylistic change in Italian
art. A more precise chronology for his work could indicate
the assimilation of such change as well as document Piero's
own artistic deve10pment. Scholars disagree on Piero's

chronology, and the date of Simonetta Vespucci is no excep-

 

tion. Fritz Knapp compares the profile of Simonetta to Mary
in the Visitation with Saints Nicholas and Anthony Abbot,
the nymphs in fiylas and the Nymphs and Catherine in the
Innocenti Altarpiece. The fantastic quality of Piero's
portrait is reminiscent of Sandro Botticelli and Filippino
Lippi in their work of the 14805.1 Mina Bacci agrees with
such an earlydating.2 A. Venturi, C. Gamba and R. Van
Marle, on the other hand, place the portrait within the last

3

years of the Quattrocento. Van Marle groups Piero's works

 

1Fritz Knapp, Piero di Cosimo Sein Leben und Seine Werke
(Halle: Verlag Von Wilhelm Knapp, 1898), p. 30, 31.

2Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, p. 68.

 

3Bacci, L'Opera Completa di Piero di Cosimo, p. 86.

according to what he sees as a succession of influences on
the artist, starting with that supposedly from his teacher
Cosimo Rosselli, and then those that might be credited, re-
spectively, to Filippino Lippi, Lorenzo di Credi, Signorelli,

and Leonardo. Simonetta, Van Marle thinks, has features

 

that recall both Lippi and Signorelli especially. Other
works that Van Marle includes in what he postulates as a

Filippino-Signorelli phase in Piero's career are Vulcan and

 

Aeolus, Hylas and the Nymphs, the Strassburg Tondo and the

 

Visitation. He believes that these works evidence character-

 

istics of Filippino's advanced stage and therefore would
place this group in the last decade of the fifteenth century,

even after 1495.4 According to Langton Douglas, Simonetta

 

Vespucci is one of the first works that Piero painted after

 

Leonardo's return to Florence in 1500: ”for, while it gives
clear proof of that master's direct influence on Piero-both
in its wonderful landscape and in the modelling of the head,
neck, and bust of the subject... we also find in it evidence
of the lingering influence of Filippino Lippi.”s Alfred
Frankfurter believes that Piero adopted a style using line

and delicate color harmonies reminiscent of Botticelli for

his third period of work; in Frankfurter's Opinion Simonetta

 

 

4Raimond Van Marle, The DeveloPment of the Italian Schools
of Painting, Vol. XIII (The Hague: Martinius Nijhoff, 1931),
p. 756.

 

 

5R. Langton Douglas, Piero di Cosimo (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 74.

 

Vespucci is among the paintings of that period which begins
after 1510.6

More recent research into the activities of patrons at
the end of the Quattrocento has produced records of accounts
paid to Piero di Cosimo.7 This strong circumstantial evi-
dence suggests dates for three of Piero's works. The Visita-
tion with Saints Nicholas and Anthony Abbot was originally
the Altarpiece for the chapel of Saint Nicholas in Santo
Spirito. Piero Capponi commissioned Clemente del Tasso to
build a frame for the altarpiece in 1489. Stephanie Craven
argues that the Quattrocento practice of building the frame
first is likely to have occurred in the case of the Capponi
Altarpiece. The decorations of Santo Spirito followed a
uniform program: all the altarpieces were the same size.
In the same church, Guiliano da San Gallo carved the frame
for the Bardi Altarpiece before Botticelli was employed to
paint it. Therefore, 1489 is the earliest date possible

for the Visitation. A more general date could be proposed
8

 

as around 1490.
The accounts of Filippo Strozzi Il Giovane contain

records of payment to Piero di Cosimo for the Mummery of the

 

6Alfred Frankfurter, "Piero di Cosimo: A Modern Master of
the Renaissance," The Art News 37 (November 12, 1938): 21.

 

7Stephanie J. Craven, "Three Dates for Piero di Cosimo,"
Burlington Magazine 117 (September 1975): 574-576.

 

8Ibid., p. 574.

Dead and "lavoro di camera mia."9 Vasari describes the

 

Triumph of Death "which was contrived mostly by Piero, when
he was already of a mature age..."10 The payment date of
150711 agrees with Vasari's report. The account books indi-
cate only partial payments to Piero for a room decoration.
Relying on Vasari's description of a panel by Piero belong-

ing to the Strozzi family and the provenance of Liberation

 

of Andromeda, Craven proposes that the partial payments

made in 1510 were for this panel.12 Such circumstantial

 

evidence would seem to give a date for Liberation of Andro-

 

meda, an important mature work, of around 1510.

The twenty years between the Visitation and Liberation

 

 

of Andromeda comprise half of Piero's career. Within that

 

period Piero's style changed significantly, but not, con-
trary to what Vasari says, almost from one work to the
next.13 Patterns emerge in Piero's work and his paintings
can be grouped according to subject matter, style, and

facility. Simonetta Vespucci is, in my opinion, one of a

group of works painted between 1490 and the first years of

 

91bid., p. 575.

10Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 128.

llCraven, p. 575.

lzIbid., p. 576.

13Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 127.

the sixteenth century. POpulated by Piero's "exceptional
humanity,"14 these paintings share a common attitude towards
landscape, and express Piero's naturalistic interests and
attention to surface detail. In their individuality they
suggest a complete independence from Cosimo Rosselli whom
he assisted in the Sistine Chapel from 1481-82.15 These

paintings do not appear to be affected by Leonardo's sfumato

or figure types which are evident in the Andromeda, from

 

very likely c. 1510. A tradition starting in the sixteenth

century claims that Leonardo designed the composition of

Liberation of Andromeda.16

 

Piero creates in this group of works a species of
humanity that undergoes a reciprocal metamorphosis between
human and animal form. Fauns and satyrs are capable of

human tenderness in Death of Procris and Lapiths and Cen-

 

taurs, whereas in the Hunt, humans are as bestial as the
animals they slaughter. The short, stocky figures in the

Visitation's Massacre of Innocents are the prototype of this

 

latter aspect of Piero's humanity. Piero's ideal type of

beauty is portrayed in Simonetta Vespucci, Death of Procris,

 

and Mars and Venus. Oriental shawls drape rounded shoulders

 

 

l4S.J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome
and Florence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961),
p. 73.

 

 

15Bacci, L'Opera Completa di Piero di Cosimo, p. 83.

 

16Freedberg, p. 74.

10

and breasts. Golden red hair is braided and adorned with
jewels. The female satyr cradling the dying satyr is both
beauty and the beast. The life cycle of Piero's peOple is

one of extremes: the senseless destruction of Forest Fire

 

and the building of a new society in Vulcan and Aeolus: the

 

debaucheries of Lapiths and Centaurs and the peaceful slumber

 

of Mars and Venus. In Simonetta Vespucci the thundercloud

 

 

and snake introduce a theme of latent violence. Feminine
beauty prevails, however, and like the other paintings of
this period, the threatening atmosphere gives way to the

fanciful and bizarre.

Piero often takes liberties with the Quattrocento land-
scape tradition in these paintings but remains within con-
ventional boundaries. The shaded brown hillocks and general-
ized blue mountains which create pattern as much as the

illusion of distance in Simonetta Vespucci are typical of

 

Piero's landscapes in this period. Because the sky combined

with the face is the compositional focus in Simonetta Ves-

 

pucci, the panel has none of the individual flowering plants

that appear in the foreground of Vulcan and Aeolus and proli-

 

ferate in Fall of Vulcan, Mars and Venus, and Death of Pro-

 

 

 

cris. The green and dry tree, a conventional landscape
motif, flanks the "Simonetta" as it does also Mary and Eliza-

beth in the Visitation. The motif symbolizes Christ's

 

sacrifice. In the Renaissance, it was believed that the
tree of life dried up and died after the fall of man. The

sacrifice of Christ's passion brought the tree to life again.

11

The significance of the motif in Simonetta Vespucci is not
clear. Piero exploits the graphic character of the denuded

tree in the Pugliese panels and the Lapiths and Centaurs.

 

The same effect is achieved by the scaffolding in Vulcan and

 

Aeolus and Return from the Hunt. The unexpected silhouette

 

intrigues Piero throughout his career, and in paintings of
his that I would consider to be later, from c. 1505 on, such

as the Vespucci panels, the Uffizi Immaculate Conception,

 

and the Berlin Adoration, he exaggerates and animates these

 

landscape forms. Piero‘s "stranger imaginations came to be
confined among flora, fauna and geology of his back-

grounds."17

The bulbous tree stump in the Vespucci panels
appears to be something more than just a tree. The sea

monster's lair itself writhes in Liberation of Andromeda,

 

and a zoomorphic mountain towers over the village. Nature
participates in these narratives. The light of the Heavenly
Spirit descends with the dove and breaks through the clouds

in the Uffizi Immaculate Conception, and clouds seem to imi-

 

tate Prometheus' gestures in the Story of Prometheus. In

 

Simonetta Vespucci, which I think is an earlier work, the

 

thundercloud, despite its evocative shape, can still be re-
garded as a natural, not a bizarre, phenomenon. Likewise,

in the Pugliese panels, the Visitation, and the Fall of Vul-

 

 

can, the drifting clouds are, it would seem, nothing more

than the effects of a warm day.

 

17Ibid., p. 73.

12

Piero's naturalistic observations include, of course,
more than just clouds. He embellishes many of the paintings
that I would locate in the 14903 with curious details of
flora, fauna, and even insects. He depicts the individual
scales of the snake coiling around the Simonetta's neck. A
wallflower has been specifically identified in the Visita-
tion,18 but even more interesting are the cattails, which
may have no symbolical significance, other than signifying
Piero's own evident interest in individual flora as well as
fauna. Tadpoles swim in the pond in the Toledo tondo, and a

grasshOpper rests on a rock in the foreground of Vulcan and

 

Aeolus. The giraffe in this Vulcan picture was probably
painted from life and may indicate the date for the canvas.
A shipment of rare animals, including a giraffe, reached
Florence in 1487. Erwin Panofsky suggests a date not too
long after 1490.19
Passages of consummate surface detail accompany Piero's
naturalistic observations. For example, Piero paints each

link of Simonetta's gold chain. The embroidered picnic

cloth and the woven mat in Lapiths and Centaurs are rendered

 

in such detail that either could be reproduced in actual

weaving. The text held by St. Nicholas in the Visitation

 

18Mirella Levi d‘Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance:
Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence: Leo S.
Olsecki, 1977), P. 270.

 

19Erwin Panofsky, "Early History of Man," Studies in Icon-
ology (New York: Harper and Row), p. 47 note 44.

13

has been identified.20 The golden balls reflect an image
of a church and the gold braid of St. Anthony's robe details
images of other saints. Contrasts of fabric - gauze, satin,

brocade, appear in the Visitation, Fall of Vulcan, the Inno-

 

 

centi Altarpiece, Mars and Venus, Death of Procris and

 

 

Lapiths and Centaurs. Metal objects, such as Mars's suit of

 

armor, the dinnerware and weapons in Lapiths and Centaurs,

 

and the jewelry in the Innocenti Altarpiece capture Piero's
eye. This interest in surface detail indicates Northern
influence transmitted by paintings such as the Portinari
Altarpiece or absorbed indirectly through the work of other
Quattrocento artists.

An analysis of compositional and figural development
suggests a rough chronology for this group of paintings:
some of them appearing to be earlier and others later within
this span of years between c. 1490 and c. 1505. The car-
rousel-like horses, reminiscent of Uccello's, in Allegory .

and Vulcan and Aeolus, with their disprOportionately small

 

heads and wooden limbs seem to be early renderings of the
horse when compared to the greater success of the retreating
steed in the Hunt. The transition from foreground to middle-

ground in Death of Procris and particularly Mars and Venus,

 

 

is more subtle than in the Vulcan panels or the Visitation.

 

 

20Dario Covi, "Lettering in Fifteenth Century Florentine
Painting," Art Bulletin 45 (1963): 16.

 

14

But even in these panels consistent anatomical accuracy
still eludes Piero.
The Pugliese panels pose a thorny problem in Piero's

chronology. The Forest Fire, Hunt and Return from the Hunt

 

 

are generally acknowledged to be the "various scenes with

little figures" executed round a chamber in the house of

21

Francesco del Pugliese. The Pugliese Palace was construc-

ted in 1488, and therefore the earliest possible date for

the series might be around 1490.22

The inconsistent handling
of the figures and the compositions make it difficult to

date the paintings as a group. Return from the Hunt is

 

composed in receding planes parallel to the picture plane.
This approach to the representation of landscape space might
be seen as a further development of the patterned composition

seen in Death of Procris and Mars and Venus. The staggered

 

 

planes of Mars and Venus mark a measured progression to the

 

horizon. The Hunt, however, is Piero's most dynamic compo-
sition of this period. The foreshortened cadaver, the fallen
branch, and the horse and rider reinforce diagonal movement,
and, with the exception of the two foreground trees which
terminate the diagonals, he does not assert the frontal
plane. Piero achieves a variety of successful figures in

the Hunt. Musculature is well developed, and none of the

figures has a withered limb or malformed hand or rubbery

 

21Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 131.

22Douglas, p. 14 and 34.

15

wrist. If skill in handling composition and figure is a
criterion for chronological position, then the Hunt is the
latest Pugliese panel and the culmination of this period of
work.

The Vespucci panels, Misfortunes of Silenus and Dis-

 

covery of Honey appear to me to be later than the Pugliese
23

 

series. The house where Vasari saw the paintings had

24

been purchased by Giovanni Vespucci in 1497. The terminus

post quem of 1500 could suggest a hypothetical date for the

 

Hunt. The last of Piero's forest fires blazes in Discovery

 

of Honey. His odd humanity has a grace and composure not
seen in the earlier figures. Piero coordinates a variety of
gestures and poses in an almost dancelike harmony of move-
ment. The "X" composition organizes the figures around a
single focal point in contrast to the agglomeration of four

separate zones of activity in Lapiths and Centaurs or the

 

 

23Everett Fahy in "Some Later Works of Piero di Cosimo" pro-
poses the reverse. He believes that the Battle of Lapiths
and Centaurs was influenced by Leonardo's cartoon for the
Battle of Anghiari and that the Vespucci panels "which are
organized along traditional Quattrocento lines” are conserva-
tive compared to the dynamic composition and daring fore-
shortening of the Hunt. Everett Fahy, Jr., "Some Later Works
of Piero di Cosimo," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 65 (April 1965):
206, 207. The complicated poses and foreshortened figures
which Fahy finds remarkable in Lapiths and Centaurs and the
Hunt have precedent in the Quattrocento and in my Opinion, do
not necessarily depend on Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari. The
retreating steed in the Hunt, for example, is more like the
horses in Uccello's Battle of San Romano.

 

 

 

 

 

24Fahy, p. 211 notes 6 and 7.

16

anarchy of the Hunt. The light has changed from the general
illumination of the earlier paintings to spot-lighted areas
and pronounced shadows. The assiduously described flora of

Fall of Vulcan and Death of Procris have disappeared, and

 

 

there is less concern for surface detail. The swarming bees
indicate Piero's sustained naturalistic interests, but the
bizarre tree form seems to belong already to the type of

fantasy landscape of Liberation of Andromeda.

 

It is difficult to assign a position to Simonetta Ves-

 

2233; within the rough chronology of works which I believe

to have been painted in the 14905 and early years of the six-
teenth century. The profile portrait is a static composi-
tion, and the Simonetta's features can be isolated in a
number of women in this group. For example, Mary in the

Visitation: the nymphs in Fall of Vulcan: and Venus in Mars

 

 

and Venus have the same s-shaped profile with a high forehead

 

and slightly upturned nose as Simonetta. The tandem por-
traits of Francesco Giamberti and his son Guiliano da San
Gallo appear to be later and should be dated together.

Francesco Giamberti died in 1480,25

and his profiled image
suggests a commemorative post-humous portrait. Between 1490
and 1500 Guiliano da San Gallo was engaged in commissions
outside of Florence. In 1505, he left Florence again for

Rome to work for Julius II. Because of his prolonged

 

25Rab Hatfield, "Five Early Renaissance Portraits," Art
Bulletin 47 (September 1965): 328 note 37.

17

presence in Florence between 1500 and 1504, it is likely
that Piero painted his portrait during that time. Born
1445, a date of 1505 would be consistent with his appearance
as a man of about sixty.26
The landscape in Piero's Stockholm Madonna with its

prominent dark cloud in the sky, may be relevant to the

dating of Simonetta Vespucci. The Stockholm Madonna suggests

 

that a close connection existed between Piero di Cosimo and

Filippino Lippi in the 14905.27

Filippino's Strozzi Madonna
probably served as a model for Piero's Stockholm Madonna;
the composition is quoted almost verbatim, and Piero picks

28 The Strozzi

up the same green lining of the cloak.
Madonna was painted around 1487, although Katherine Neilson

finds it impossible to say whether it was the morceau de

 

reception in connection with the Strozzi Chapel in Santa

29

Maria Novella as Scharf proposes. The question remains

how Piero would have known the composition. Neilson suggests
that Filippino's Madonna may have hung in a public place.30
Scharf recommends a date before 1492 for Piero di Cosimo's

Stockholm Madonna. After his return to Florence from Rome

 

26Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, p. 83.

 

27Katherine B. Neilson, Filippino Lippi A Critical Study
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 120.

 

281bid., p. 69.

291bid., p. 68.

30Ibid., p. 120.

18

in 1492, Filippino's style changed. It is unlikely "that
so individual a master as Piero di Cosimo would model him-
self retrospectively on a stylistic phase of Filippino's

art which the latter had already outgrown."31

~Piero's Simonetta Vespucci, if not painted in the last

 

decade of the fifteenth century, belongs nonetheless to a
group of paintings which were painted during that period
because the landscape, although imaginative, does not contain
the bizarre elements of some of his later works nor does

it have the sfumato of Perseus and Andromeda. The profile

 

of Simonetta also conforms to the Quattrocento portrait

tradition.

 

31Alfred Scharf, "Filippino Lippi and Piero di Cosimo,"

Art in America, 19 no. 2 (February 1931): 62.

Simonetta Vespucci A Quattrocento Profile Portrait

 

The woman in Piero di Cosimo's portrait Simonetta Ves-

 

pucci exemplifies what seems like the Quattrocento ideal of
beauty, which is displayed in feminine profile portraits in
the second half of the fifteenth century.1 The independent
profile panel is the one form of portraiture which generally
does not depend on works in larger forms.2 These portraits
evidently served some kind of family, domestic purpose and
were only secondarily works of art. It is possible that
they were made as visual addenda to the often assiduously
compiled family records.3 The extant profile portraits

of women produced between 1450 and 1500 indicate that this
type of portraiture was painted according to a formula.

The bust length figure, usually facing to the left, is set
against a neutral background or landscape or sometimes with-
in a narrowly defined architectural space. The static pro-

file limits characterization to the external and reduces

 

iHeinrich Wolfflin, Classic Art, trans. by Peter and Linda
Murray (London: Phaidon Press, 1952): p. 238.

 

2John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, Bollin-

ger Series 12, National Gallery of Art (New York: giantheon,
1966), p. 35.

 

31bid., p. 37.

19

20

form to pattern; the artists seem to think of the feminine
profile as intrinsically flat and decorative.4 Within the
limits of this formula aesthetic and stylistic changes did

occur,5 and Simonetta Vespucci stands apparently at the end

 

of this profile tradition. Piero di Cosimo's figure and
landscape examined separately fall within conventional
boundaries, and the relationship between his sitter and land-
scape background is conservative.

Replace Piero's evocative landscape with a flat blue
background and compare Simonetta to one of the finest exam—
ples of the feminine profile at mid—century, Baldovinetti's

Portrait of a Lady in Yellow.6 Both women represent the

 

Quattrocento ideal of beauty. Elaborately coiffed hair is
drawn up to display long necks. Jewels crowning the heads
emphasize high dominant foreheads relieved only by thin
arched brows. Bright lips contrast with pale faces. Baldo-
vinetti, following convention, cuts away the garment to

extend the neckline down the back and Piero joins the neck,

 

4Jean Lipman, "The Florentine Profile Portrait in the Quat-
trocento,” Art Bulletin 18 (March 1936): 95.

 

5Josée Mambour, "L'évolution esthétique des profils floren-
tine du Quattrocento," Revue Belge d'Archiologie et d'His-
toire de 1'Art 38 (1969): 43-60.

 

6Recent research likely confirms the earlier identification
of the subject as Francesca degli Stati. Eliot W. Rowlands,
"Baldovinetti's Portrait of a Lady in Yellow," Burlington
Magazine 122 (September 1980): 624.

 

 

21

back, and shoulder in one continuous curve. In the Cinque-
cento, breadth not verticality was emphasized and a more
mature beauty was preferred to the adolescent prettiness

of Baldovinetti's lady or Piero's Simonetta.7

In both portraits, the figure is centrally placed

facing left and the head occupying one half of the panel
dominates the composition. The effectiveness of the silhou-
ette of Simonetta against the neutral ground corresponds to
that of the lady in yellow even though Simonetta's torso is
shown in a three-quarter view. The three-quarter torso
occurs occasionally in the profile portrait. An example is

Pollaiuolo's Berlin Portrait of a Lady (1465). Here, the

 

right shoulder thrusts forward while the left remains in pro-
file. But because the pineapple design on the sitter's dress
is barely foreshortened, the rotated torso nevertheless
appears flat. This dual perspective can be seen in a low
profile relief of a woman, a possible early work of Verro-
chio while under the influenCe of Desiderio.8 A striking

resemblance exists between Simonetta Vespucci and this re-

 

lief. Both breasts are exposed: the artist depicts the right
breast as though seen from the front and renders the left in
profile. Piero, on the other hand, foreshortens the torso

as a whole and combines it with a profile head.

 

7Wolff1in, p. 239.

8John Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols. (London: Her Majesty's
Stationery Office, 1964),1: 169.

 

 

22

Jean Lipman states that Simonetta Vespucci "is neither

 

primarily a low relief nor a flat silhouette."9 Illuminated
from the left, the face is modelled only to accent the fea-
tures. A light shadow crosses the bridge of the nose sug-
gesting an eye socket. However, instead of modelling the
eye, Piero draws a triangle with two lines and creates a
lid with a parallel line above the eye. He deepens the same
shadows used by Baldovinetti to define features: the nostril
projects and recedes: full lips part: and a faint jawline
connects the chin and ear.

The raised profile in Verrochio's relief separates the
profile from the background as does the dramatic contrast
between the brilliant blue background and the luminous gold

dress and pale skin in Baldovinetti's Portrait of a Lady in

 

Yellow. The thundercloud in Piero's Simonetta Vespucci sets

 

off the profile. The contrast between the dark cloud and the
light face is maintained from the high forehead to the base
of the neck. Piero repeats this value contrast along the
left shoulder and around the right breast completing the
essential figure silhouette. The device of a cloud accentu-
ating the profile against a landscape background is a SOphis-
ticated response to the graphic demands of the profile.
Architectural forms could also be used for the same

purpose. Mainardi positions a dark thick column behind the

 

9Lipman, p. 80.

23

profile in his Berlin Portrait of a Lady (1486-1490).10 A

 

heavy curtain divides the panel of Ercole Robert‘s Ginevra

Bentivoglio (1480) and separates the figure from the land-

 

scape.ll Such devices, like Piero's cloud, are effective
as foils for the profile head. That the profile portrait
formula required an effectively contrasting background can
be seen in essential, simplified form in Deruta maiolica of
the early sixteenth century. A salver in the Victoria and
Albert Museum which dates around 1500 has four profile
figures each on a background partially shaded in blue to set
off the profile.12
Was it Piero's whim to frame the face with a cloud

rather than, say a column or curtain or plain background?

The fanciful landscape in Simonetta Vespucci is unique,

 

apparently reflecting his own strange fancies. Giorgio
Vasari enjoys describing Piero's eccentricities. ”He set
himself often to observe such animals, plants, or other
things as Nature at times creates out of caprice, or by

chance, in which he found a pleasure and satisfaction that

 

10Raimond Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools
of Painting, Vol. XIII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931),
p. 186.

 

 

llFern Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection
Italian Schools XII-XV Centugy iLondon: Phaidon Press,
1966), p. 86.

 

 

12Bernard Rackham, Guide to Italian Maiolica Victoria and
Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1933),
p. 44.

 

 

24

drove him quite out of his mind with delight,"13 and "it
pleased him to see everything wild, like his own nature; and
he declared that Nature's own things should be left to her

to look after, without lifting a hand to them."14 An unruly
thundercloud would perhaps appeal to Piero's imagination
although Vasari reports that Piero was frightened by thunder-
storms.15 Evidently Piero was sensitive to the weather: he
liked to see the rain pouring from the roofs to the ground.16

The clouds in Simonetta Vespucci might then be said to be a

 

combination of observed weather effects and Piero's fancies.
Other artists in the Quattrocento paint darkened skies.
The Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo Van der Goes arrived in
Florence about 1483. Piero must have seen this altarpiece.17
Although it cannot be proven that the landscape in the right
wing of the triptych influenced Piero's landscape, similari-

ties do occur. Bare trees are silhouetted against a winter

sky in Hugo's right wing and grey clouds encroach upon white

 

13Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculp-
Egrs and Architects, trans. by Gaston Duc de Vere, Vol. IV
(London: Philip Lee Warner, 1913), p. 127.

 

 

14Ibid., p. 126.

lSIbid., p. 133.

lerid.

17The shepherds in Piero's Berlin Adoration appear to be de-
rived from Hugo Van Der Goes's shepherdsvin the Portinari

Altarpiece.

 

25

clouds. Brown hillocks recede up to the distant mountains.
Piero softens this harsh Northern landscape: iridescent
colors tinge the clouds; and the horizon glows much like the
horizon in Perugino's portrait of Francesco delle Opere
(1494). In Transfiguration of Christ (late 1480s) by Gio-
vanni Bellini, dark clouds effectively set off against
white clouds loom in the sky creating a sense of mystery,
as well as alluding to the "white and glittering" appearance
of the transfigured Christ, as narrated in the Gospels.
Andrea Mantegna sees figures in cloud formations. In

his St. Sebastian (c. 1460) a horse and rider emerges from

 

a cloud. An even earlier example dated around 1448 by P.
Schubring18 comes from a Florentine cassone. Two panels
tell the story of Cupid and Psyche. Parts of the tale are
illustrated by the clouds: the West Wind brings Psyche to
the hidden valley: Cupid comes to Psyche and remains invi-
sible because their union is only a cloud formation. Per-
haps Piero visualized a woman's face in the clouds. The face
might appear to be a variation of the clouds.19 According
to Vasari, Piero appreciated forms made by chance. "He
would sometimes stop to gaze at a wall against which sick
peOple had been for a long time discharging their spittle,

and from this he would picture to himself battles of

 

18Paul Schubring, Cassoni (Leipzig: Verlag von Karl W.
Hiersemann, 1923), cassone 911 and 912.

19Lipman, p. 80.

26

horsemen, and the most fantastic cities and widest land-
scapes that were ever seen: and he did the same with clouds
in the sky."20

The fanciful cloud in Simonetta Vespucci distinguishes

 

the landscape from the background clouds in Pollaiuolo's
Berlin (1465)21 and Milan (c. 1467-70)22 profile portraits.

No attempt has been made in these portraits to suggest an
actual landscape. The schematic clouds appear as though on

a stage backdrop which has then been placed behind the figure.
The effect is flatter than a plain background might have

been because the pattern of the clouds asserts the surface

of these panels. Simonetta Vespucci is also primarily a

 

pattern on the surface rather than a representation of a
figure in space. Piero‘s rendering of the three-quarter
torso only hints at a three dimensional form. Bright local
colors and the arabesque of the snake and braids decorate
and draw attention to the panel's surface. It is unclear
how far back the middleground extends: hills and trees frame
the face which projects them forward. Only one shaded
hillock prevents the brown hills from appearing absolutely
flat. The dramatic value contrast of the dark cloud and

face brings the thundercloud to the frontal plane. The

 

20Vasari, Vol. 4, p. 127.

21Alberto Busignani, Pollaiuolo (Florence: Edizioni d'arte,
1969), plate XLIV.

 

22Ibid., plate LXIV.

27

background has a tapestry-like appearance: it tends to be
read up and down rather than in depth.23 The result is a
decorative unity on the surface.

Backgrounds that include an architectural enclosure

define better the space in which the sitter exists. In

two examples which may be contemporary with Simonetta Ves-

 

pgggi, the conception of the profile has changed from that
of an almost flat-seeming image, typical of the third
quarter of the century,24 to a more naturalistic and illu-
sionistic approach to the features, typical of the final

quarter of the century.25 The woman in A Portrait of a Lady
6

 

attributed to the school of Botticelli (Lindenau Museum)2
looks out a window while she rests her hands on the sill.
The landscape viewed by the woman and the landscape behind
her appear to be the same. A balustrade separates the figure
in Mainardi's Berlin portrait (c. 1486-1490)27 from the
landscape. The figures in these portraits appear to receive
light from their landscape. "Simonetta" on the other hand,
is modelled by the conventional effect of diffused light.

The architectural context of Mainardi's Portrait of a Lady

 

 

23Lipman, p. 84.

24Mambour, p. 49.

25Ibid., p. 56.

26Lipman, figure 26.

27Van Marle, Vol. XIII, p. 186.

28

and the portrait attributed to the school of Botticelli
still segregates the sitter from the landscape. The three-
quarter and full portrait, not the profile portrait, achieve
an effect of continuous spatial recession and integration

of figure and landscape.

In the profile portrait the perception of character,
like the effect of space is, again limited. Facial expres-
sion is omitted. To what extent can the Quattrocento land-
scape reveal the personality? Lipman finds that the wide_

imaginative landscape of Simonetta Vespucci provides a con-

 

trast to the prosy scenery of all earlier fifteenth century
portraits. "The landscape now echpes the personality and
mood of the sitter. The bare trees, the distant castle,
the swirling clouds combine to form a rich romantic scene,
full of suggestive overtones and subtly suggested relation-

28 That the landscape in-

ship with the person portrayed."
fluences the overall impression of the sitter is certainly
true. But the landscape and personal adornments determine
the exotic character of Piero's woman rather than reflect

the personality or mood of the sitter as Lipman suggests.

Simonetta Vespucci is not unique in this type of character-
ization. Compare Simonetta to the Duchess of Urbino. Each

is set before a landscape. The horizon line meets the

figures at the base of their necks dividing the panels in

 

28Lipman, p. 91.

29

half and releasing the heads to the sky.29 Piero della
Francesco allows nothing to distract from the Duchess's
head. Frederick Hartt suggests that Piero set out to prove
the curvature Of the earth visually. "The rate at which the
conical hills diminish and the rate at which their intersec-
tion with the plain vanishes, demonstrate that the plain

30 This is an inter-

is part Of the surface of a sphere."
esting idea, but whether Piero intended such an elaborate
scheme cannot be proven. Nonetheless, the measured land-
scape suggests the presence of a rational intellect. The

thundercloud in Simonetta Vespucci could create the Opposite

 

impression. A thunderstorm is unpredictable, disorderly,

an accident Of nature. Emotion perhaps governs the sitter.

The Duchess wears a strand of regular pearls. "La Bella"

adorns herself with an unruly snake. Without their prOps,

the Duchess and Piero's Simonetta are left wearing equable
31

masks.

An early portrait by Leonardo, Ginevra di Benci (1475),
32

 

raises the Quattrocento portrait to a new power. "The

 

29Although slightly more than half Of the panel is devoted
to the Duchess's head.

3OFrederick Hartt, History Of Italian Renaissance Art (Engle-
wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall: New York: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 1969), p. 244.

 

31The respective landscapes may also be said to reflect the
different temperaments of the two artists.

32Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, p. 101.

 

30

definition Of the contours is more delicate and the sense

Of the face as a relief surface is more pronounced."33 Her
pensive, almost melancholic expression suggests that this is
a serious young woman. It is most likely that an emblematic
connection exists here between the sitter and the landscape.
A prominent display Of juniper surrounds the face. On the
back Of the panel, a sprig of juniper enclosed by a laurel
and palm wreath, gives plausible evidence that the painting
could be identified with three sixteenth century accounts of
the portrait.34 The juniper bush envelOps her head as the
dark clouds surround Simonetta's profile. However, the
proximity of the bush to the face is more believable than
the cloud to the face in Piero's portrait. The bush appears
almost overbearing, especially as it is seen together with
the melancholy Of Ginevra's expression.

The general composition of Neroccio di Landi's Portrait

of a Lady (1490) has been related to Leonardo's Ginevra di

 

 

Beggi.35 The overall impression Of the portrait is one of

charm. The sparkling landscape accords with the sweet smile
and the gentle eyes Of the sitter. Her appeal would remain
even without the attractive landscape because her sweet dis-

position is revealed in her expression.

 

33Ibid.

34Shapley, Paintings from the Kress Collection, p. 251.
Juniper, ginepro = Ginevra.

 

35Gertrude Coor, Neroccio de'Landi 1447-1500 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 57.

 

31

The remote and elusive Mona Lisa transcends the imme-

 

diate charm Of Nerocchio's lady. "Leonardo was not con-
cerned directly with psychology, but the working of the brain
was reflected in the immanence of movement in the face. In
that sense and in that sense only there is a profound con-
gruity between the human image Of the Mona Lisa and the
landscape at the back, for both result from protracted
occular analysis and both are scientific and passionless."36
Leonardo as Observer Of nature seeks an underlying universal
vision. Piero di Cosimo, on the other hand, sees in nature
a reflection of his own peculiar imagination. He appropri-

ates the superficial aspects Of forms to spin his yarns and

weave his fantasies. Simonetta Vespucci is a kind Of fan-

 

tasy. Conjured from Piero's imagination, the cloud, face,
snake, and decorations each play a role in the portrait.
Langton Douglas says, "Take away the exciting, vital land-
scape with its dark, minatory stormclouds overshadowing

Simonetta, and you mar the affect Of the whole picture."37

 

36POpe-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, p. 109.

 

37R. Langton Douglas, Piero di Cosimo (Chicago: University
Of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 74.

 

Imaginary Portraits of Simonetta Vespucci

Piero di Cosimo's portrait Of a woman with a snake
coiled around her neck bears the inscription SIMONETTA
IANVENSIS VESPUCCIA. This portrait and several other Quat-
trocento portrait-like images have been said to be the like-
ness of the beautiful Simonetta Vespucci. Born Simonetta
Cattaneo c. 1453, she married Marco Vespucci and assumed a
position in Florentine society.l Her favor was worn by
Guiliano di Medici, brother of Lorenzo di Medici,2 in a
famous tournament celebrating the conclusion Of a defensive
league between Florence, Venice, and Milan.3 Guiliano's
victory and Simonetta's beauty were celebrated in the Stanze
of Angelo Poliziano. Poliziano began the Stanze to commemo-

. . . . . . 4
rate an earlier joust won by Lorenzo Il Magniflcino 1n 1469.

 

lRonald Lightbrown, Sandro Botticelli Complete Catalogue, 2
vols. (London: Paul Elek, 1978), l: 42.

2Herbert P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi, Commonly Called Sandro
Botticelli, Painter of Florence (LondOn: George Bell and
Sons, 1908: reprint ed., Botticelli, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 52.

 

 

3Lightbrown, 1: 41.

4Horne, p. 53.

32

33

While he was writing his Stanze, Simonetta Vespucci died,5

and Poliziano and other poets wrote epigrams on her death.6
Simonetta Vespucci may then be said to have been the Petrar-
chan mistress Of Guiliano, chaste, beautiful and unassailable
because of being married and her high birth.7

Vasari does not mention the inscription,8 and the
question has arisen as to whether it is original or whether

it was added at a later date by the Vespucci family.9

M. Reiset, director Of the Louvre, purchased Simonetta Ves-
10

 

2233i from the last member of the Vespucci family in 1841.
When the painting was acquired by the Vespucci family is not
known. Vasari saw it or something like it in the house Of
Francesco da San Gallo, who had been Piero's friend and

intimate companion. Francesco painted Piero's portrait: a

 

5Enrico Barfucci, Lorenzo de' Medici e la Societa Artistica
del Suo Tempo (Florence: Gonnelli, 1945), p. 151, note 6,
from Achelle Neri, La Simonetta in Giornale Storico della
letteratura, Vol. V, anno III, p. 131.

 

 

 

 

 

6Horne, p. 53.

7Lightbrown, 1: 42.

8Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Emigent Painters, Sculp-
tors and Architects, trans. by Gaston Due de Vere, Vol. IV
(LondOn: Philip Lee Warner, 1913), p. 134.

 

 

9Mina Bacci, L'Opera Completa di Piero di Cosimo (Milan:
Rizzoli, 1976), P. 86.

 

10Louis M. Richter, Chantilly in History and Art (London:
John Murray, 1913), p. 146.

 

34

woodcut OOpy was used by Vasari in his life Of Piero.ll

Piero di Cosimo himself painted Francesco's father, Guiliano
da San Gallo and his grandfather, Francesco Giamberti.12

Piero's Simonetta Vespucci tOO, may have been painted for

 

all we know, for Francesco da San Gallo. Perhaps Piero
even gave the portrait to him or to Guiliano, in which
case the identification Of the figure as Simonetta Vespucci
would then seem unlikely.

The inscription on the bottom of Piero's portrait is
probably a later addition. Underneath the painted band, the
so-called Simonetta's shawl continues to the bottom of the
panel,14 although this in itself does not necessarily prove
that the inscription was added at a much later date. It
would have been to the artist's advantage to complete the
figure before adding an inscription.15 The Chambery Egg;

trait Of a Man (1430-5) has an inscribed ledge that was

 

painted at the time of the portrait.16 X-ray photographs

 

llVasari, Vol. IV, p. 134.

12Ibid.

13Ulrich Middledorf, "Portraits by Francesco da Sangallo,"
Art Quarterly 1 (1938): 115.

 

14Bacci, p. 86.

15Rab Hatfield, "Five Early Renaissance Portraits," Art
Bulletin 47 no. 3 (September, 1965): 327 note 29.

 

16John Pope-Hennessy, Paolo Uccello, 2nd ed. (London:
Phaidon Press, 1969). P. 148.

 

35

taken Of this portrait reveal that the ledge, like the band

in Simonetta Vespucci was painted over the sitter's coat.l7

 

This is apparently true for two portraits attributed to

Domenico Veneziano, Matteo Olivieri and Michele Olivieri

 

 

(1440-1445), although the identifying inscriptions on these

18

portraits were added later. The overlaid band on Simonetta

 

Vespucci therefore reflects a standard painting technique
and is insufficient proof of an amended inscription without
an analysis of the lettering.

Like the inscriptions on the Chambery and Olivieri por-
traits, SIMONETTA IANVENSIS VESPUCCI is written in Roman
capitals. Roman capitals, although seen in Italian picture
inscriptions as early as the fourteenth century, do not
begin to prevail until the 14203.19 The Roman capitals used
by Florentine painters from about 1420 to about 1470 are a

mixture Of medieval and classical forms.20

The lettering
on the Chambery portrait exhibits two nonclassical conven-
tions: the stroke splays and terminates without a con-

spicuous serif: there is a center-point between ELFIN and

FATVTTO. The more "correct" lettering Of the Olivieri

 

17Hatfield, p. 327 note 22.

18Ibid.

19Dario A. Covi, ”Lettering in Fifteenth Century Floren-
tine Painting," Art Bulletin 45 (1963): 5.

 

20Ibid., p. 7.

36

portraits recommends a date for the inscription in the last
few decades of the fifteenth century. "Certain anomolous
features such as the serifs of the "A," "Ms" and "Ns:" the
tails Of the "Rs," and the abbreviation mark, may indicate
that the inscriptions were put on before 1550, when such
forms became Obsolete."21
NO flourishes distinguish the lettering at the bottom
of Piero's portrait. The letters are Roman capitals executed
with a heavy hand. The spacing is uneven. The painter
allows adequate space for SIMONETTA but must squeeze in the
last two names. The letters are not particularly well
formed: "85," especially in VESPUCCIA are awkward: the
lower parts are too small; the upper part of the "C” hangs
over the bottom portion. This clumsy lettering compares un-

favorably with other examples in Piero's work. Piero uses

Roman capitals in only one painting, the Fiesole Immaculate

 

Conception. Here he skillfully foreshortens the letters

 

forming the didactic inscriptions and paints letters in
reverse when the scroll turns back upon itself. Two con-
servative elements, the ligature "IE" in BENEDICTA and the
centerpoint between QVE and ANGEL, indicate a transitional
style at a time when many artists had purged their Roman

capitals of inconsistencies and some Of the nonclassical

 

21Hatfield, p. 316 note 4.

37

conventions.22 The earlier date Of Piero's portrait could

perhaps explain its clumsy inscription, but it is unlikely
that Piero would use a more conservative script in a late
work if he had already adOpted a completely classical

style.23 Two other paintings by Piero, the Visitation and

 

the Toledo Tondo demonstrate his awareness of epigraphical

 

conventions.24 He chooses the Gothic miniscule for the book

inscriptions, an appropriate choice for a painted sacred

25

text in late Quattrocento painting. The inscription on

Simonetta would seem, then, to be a later addition.

 

Simonetta Vespucci appears to be the only panel por-

 

trait Of a woman painted in the Quattrocento that has a ledge
inscribed with the presumed name Of the sitter. Neroccio,

in Portrait Of a Lady (c. 1490), paints the letters "AP"

 

and "NER" on Opposite sides of the inscription honoring his
sitter. Attempts to interpret the lettering as abbrevia-
tions of the names of the sitter, Alessandra Piccolomini,
and the artist, Neroccio, have been discredited. Such

abbreviations are unfamiliar in Italian Renaissance

 

22Covi., p. 6.

23The possibility that Piero relegated the task of painting
the inscription to a helper cannot be ignored.

24Covi in "Lettering in Fifteenth Century Florentine Paint-
ing," demonstrates that after 1420 artists were aware of
different lettering styles and used them for formal and
iconographic purposes.

25Covi., p. 16.

38

epigraphy.26 The inscription, "Although I achieve with

wondrous art what man may, I get nowhere, a mortal competing
with gods,"27 compliments the beauty and virtue Of the sitter
as does the inscription "NOli me tangere" on a presumed
portrait of Lucrezia de' Donati after Verrocchio (c. 1496).28
The sitter's name is sometimes inscribed around the base of
the portrait bust. The fine portrait of Battista Sforza,
Duchess of Urbino (c. 1473), by Francesco Laurana is such

an example. The incised inscription differs very little in
placement or in appearance from the painted inscription on

Simonetta Vespucci.

 

Other Quattrocento portrait inscriptions would associate
the portrait image with a respected ancestor or famous
person. If the Olivieri portraits represent father and
son, at the time they were painted, the father, Matteo had
been dead for some time, and the son, Michele, would have
been sixty years Old. The sitters are not known to have
been persons of great importance outside their family and it
is presumed that portraits representing members Of the

Olivieri family were later taken for Matteo and Michele.29

 

26Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue Of the Italian Paintings, 2
vols. (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1979), 1: 343.

 

271bid.

28Raimond Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools
Of Painting, VOl. XI (The Hague: Martinus NinOff, 1929),
p. 549..

 

 

29Hatfield, p. 325 note 18.

39

The inscriptions identifying the founders Of Florentine art
on a panel (c. 1450) attributed to Paolo Uccello probably
date from the sixteenth century, and there is no certainty
about who is actually represented.30 Such apprOpriations Of
existing images are compatible with the practice of painting
posthumous portraits. Fidelity to the appearance Of the
sitter is less important than the recognition accorded to
the individual.

Most Quattrocento portraits do not have identifying
inscriptions. A heraldic device, motto, or play on the
sitter's name make the family connection. For example, the
word juniper in Italian is ginepro which is transposed to
Ginevra. The juniper bush behind the woman in the portrait
attributed to Leonardo in the Washington National Gallery
and the juniper incorporated into the emblem on the back of
the panel suggest that the sitter is Ginevra di Benci.31

The representation of juniper to refer to the name of a

sitter possibly identifies Pisanello's profile Portrait Of a

 

Woman (c. 1440) in the Louvre as Ginevra d' Este. The

Este emblem is embroidered on her sleeve and a sprig of

juniper is worn on her bodice.32

 

30POpe-Hennessy, p. 158.

31Shapley, p. 251.

3ZIbid., p. 252 note 5.

40

Frederick Hartt prOposes an etymological relationship

between wasps and asps (vespe and aspide) for Simonetta

 

Vespucci.33 The Vespucci coat Of arms displays golden

wasps against an azure ground.34

Piero di Cosimo's Story Of
Silenus painted for Giovanni Vespucci, recounts the discovery
Of honey and Silenus's unfortunate encounter with the hive.

The subject matter probably held heraldic significance for

the Vespucci family. In Botticelli's Mars and Venus, wasps

 

swarm out of a trunk in the upper right hand corner of the
panel where the coat Of arms is expected. The panel may

35 The

have been a nuptial piece for a Vespucci marriage.
branch of the Vespucci family that patronized Botticelli
and Piero de Cosimo was only remotely connected to that of
Marco Vespucci, Simonetta's husband,36 and the idea Of a
punning association between an asp around a woman's neck and
the Vespucci name remains conjectural.

The device Of a snake biting its tail appears on a

medal Of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco di Medici.37 The snake

 

33Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art (Engle-
wood, N.J.: Prentice Hall: and New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1969), p. 432.

 

34Ernest H. Gombrich, "Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in
the Neo-Platonic Symbolism of his Circle" in Symbolic Images
Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Phaidon,
1972), p. 216 note 139.

 

 

3SIbid., p. 68.

36Ibid., note 140.

37Ibid., p. 66.

41

in Piero's portrait teases its tail. What connection, if
any, can be made?38 Such an incorporation of an emblem into

a portrait could find parallel in Neroccio's Portrait of a

 

Lady: the frame, which is contemporary with the painting is
decorated with two eagle heads biting into a golden ball
alternating with a golden flame. The motif is a heraldic
device Of the Sienese family of Bandini who through marriage
were privileged to use the Piccolomini name.39 The snake
biting its own tail, a hieroglyph described by Iamblichus as
signifying eternity and the aura of esoteric wisdom which
surrounds it may have proclaimed to Lorenzo di Pierfrances-
co's contemporaries a preoccupation with mystic lore,4o
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's mentor Marsilio Ficino translated
Iamblichus and discussed the sacred symbols in his writing.41
For Ficino heavenly wisdom is achieved by the abandonment Of
the soul's lower regions for the higher realm of the intel-

lect.

Wisdom, who is born from the exalted head Of Jupiter,
creator of all things, prescribes to philOSOphers,
her lovers, that whenever they desire to grasp a

 

jgFrederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, 2nd

ed. (New York: Harry W. Abrams, Inc., 1979), p. 486.

 

39Gertrude Coor, Neroccio de' Landi 1447-1500 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 59.

 

40Gombrich, p. 66.

41Ibid.

42

beloved thing, they should aim at the top, at the
head of things, than at the feet below. For Pallas,
the divine Offspring who is sent from the high heavens,
herself dwells on the heights which she makes her
stronghold. Furthermore she shows us that we cannot
attain to the summits and heads Of things before
having mounted to the head of the soul, the intellect
leaving behind us the soul's lower regions.42
If there is a link between Pierfrancesco and Piero di Cosi-
mo's portrait, could the subject represent Pallas? She
wears an attribute of Pallas, the serpent, and is up on a
promentory as protectress. Pallas is the sky's daughter
and Often carries her father's thunderbolt. Thunderclouds
signify her birth.43
Such speculation curiously leads back to Simonetta
Vespucci. The joust of 1475 intended as an occasion for
Guiliano di Medici to display his prowess was an elaborate
affair.44 As was customary, standards bearing a device
celebrating amorous thoughts of the jouster towards his
mistress preceded each participant. Known only from literary
descriptions, Guiliano's standard, which Botticelli had
painted,4S represented Simonetta in the semblance of Pal-

46

las. The meaning of the standard was meant to be a

 

42Ibid., p. 70.

43H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York:

Dutton and CO., Inc., 1959), p. 108.

44Lightbrown, 1: 41.

451bia.. p. 39.

46Ibid., p. 42.

43

secret. Poliziano's Stanze revealed it. "The mistress he
loved was a matchless lady, armed with prudence and chastity
against the darts and flowers of love."47
Botticelli's Standard may have been the only image Of
Simonetta Vespucci painted by an artist. A persistent art
historical myth has resulted in many spurious identifica-
tions of Simonetta in portraits and paintings. The quest

for her image may be due in part to a portrait mentioned by

Vasari in his life Of Botticelli. "In the ggardaroba Of

 

the Lord Duke Cosimo there are two very beautiful heads Of
women in profile by his hand, one Of which is said to be
the mistress of Guiliano di Medici, brother of Lorenzo,

and the other Madonna Lucrezia di Tornabuoni, wife Of said

..48

Lorenzo. The legend of the "Bella Simonetta" became

49

part of the nineteenth century aesthetic movement. Ruskin

first popularized the myth by publishing a note by Mr.

Tyrwhitt in "Ariadne Florentina" in 1873.50

Mr. Tyrwhitt
sought to prove that after Guiliano's death in 1478,

Simonetta must have been induced to allow Botticelli to

 

471bid., p. 44

48Giorgio Vasari, Lives Of the Mgst Eminent Painters, Sculp-
tors, and Architects, trans. by Gaston Duc de Vere, Vol. III
(LondOn: Philip Lee Warner, 1912), p. 253.

 

 

49Horne, p. 52.

SOIbid.

44

paint her in the nude and that she was the model for the

women in Primavera, Birth of Venus and Calumny Apelles.51

 

 

His account fails to note that Simonetta died in 1476, two
years before Guiliano's death.52 Horne rejects the notion
that Simonetta Vespucci was Guiliano's mistress. "According
to the notions Of Medieval chivalry, ladies were as indis-
pensable tO a joust, as were arms or horses: and it would
be entirely unhistorical to necessarily imagine in the
attentions of Guiliano to Simonetta anything beyond an
elaborate piece of ceremonial compliment."53 NO portrait
Of Simonetta is known to exist and many different looking
women have been identified as Simonetta Vespucci.

Domenico Ghirlandaio's fresco Of the Madonna of Mercy
in the Vespucci Chapel, Ognissanti, Florence (1473) in-
cludes portraits of the VeSpucci family. Two sources identi-

fy one of the male members as Amerigo Vespucci.S4 Jan

Lauts acknowledges the female members without naming them,55

 

SIIbid.

52L.D. and Helen Ettlinger, Botticelli (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1976), p. 164.

 

53Horne, p. 53.

54Barfucci, plate 37: Jan Lauts, Domenico Ghirlandaio
(Vienna: Anton Schroll and CO., 1943), plate 9.

 

55Lauts, plate 9.

45

while Enrico Barfucci states that Ghirlandaio's fresco con-
tains the only documented portrait Of Simonetta Vespucci.56
As stated above, Simonetta was distantly related by marriage
to Guido Antonio, his son Giovanni and Amerigo Vespucci.57
If the identification Of Amerigo is accurate, it is diffi-
cult tO accept the portrait Of the young woman in Ghirlan-
daio's fresco as Simonetta Vespucci. Barfucci describes

Piero di Cosimo's portrait as an idealization of someone

else's portrait of Simonetta.58 He does not state which one,

but the resemblance between Piero di Cosimo's Simpnetta

 

Vespucci and the woman in Ghirlandaio's fresco is greater
than any other supposed portraits Of Simonetta Vespucci.
Both, at any rate, conform to a type of Quattrocento beauty.
Five portraits attributed to the school of Botticelli
have in the past been designated imaginary portraits Of
Simonetta Vespucci. The woman in the Frankfort picture
(c. 1483-6) wears a cameo representing a famous antique
cornelian of Apollo and Marsyas which was included in an
inventory of Lorenzo di Medici's possessions in 1492.59

Her hair is braided with pearls: two plaits joined at her

breast form a pendant. She wears an aigrette of heron

 

56Barfucci, p. 122.

57Note 35.

58Barfucci, plate 34.

59Lightbrown, Vol. II, p. 116.

46

feathers. A portrait in the Cook Collection, Richmond,
England, portrays a woman squeezing her breast. A feathered
headdress and pearls adorn her long loose hair. The Berlin
portrait is of a similar type of beauty and probably con-

60 The Yamazaki and

temporary with the Frankfort portrait.
London (National Gallery) portraits depict women in contem-
porary gowns and coiffures wearing a type of cloak borrowed
from the antique.61 Raimond Van Marle suggests that the

Frankfort, Berlin and Cook Collection portraits represent

Simonetta Vespucci. Although Piero di Cosimo's Simonetta

 

Vespucci "does not bear a strong likeness to the others, it

 

appears nonetheless, to represent the same person. Piero di
Cosimo's painting proves that the romantic tradition which
arose around the figure of Simonetta and which inspired
certain of Poliziano's Stanzas, continued for a good many

years after her death."62

But the only description of
Simonetta's beauty is in Poliziano's Stanze. Piero di
Cosimo's painting cannot be used as proof that Botticelli
or any other artist painted a portrait of Simonetta. These

so-called portraits of Simonetta Vespucci share a common

approach to a portrait-like image of an ideal beauty. They

 

6Orbid., p. 117.

61Ibid., p. 118.

62Raimond Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools
of Painting, Vol. XII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931),
p. 70}

 

 

47

are imaginary portraits. An inscription apparently added
to an existing image of a beautiful woman served to associate

Piero's painting with the "Bella Simonetta."

 

Renaissance Images of CleOpatra

Vasari in his life Of Piero di Cosimo mentions "a
work by the hand Of Piero, a very beautiful head Of Cleo-
patra, with an asp wound round her neck."1 This description
recommended the profile with the inscription "Simonetta
Vespucci" to Gustavo Frizzoni who made the attribution Of
the portrait to Piero di Cosimo in 1879.2 According to
Frizzoni, the portrayal Of Simonetta Vespucci as Cleopatra
would be following the custom of flattering one's love,
especially the fair sex, by association with an antique
personage of virtue and beauty.3 Not all scholars agree

that the Simonetta is the same as Piero's Cleopatra. Hat-

 

 

field believes that there is only a fair possibility that
the two paintings are identical.4 Whether Piero's painting

of a bewitching beauty, a snake, and threatening sky

 

lGiorgio Vasari, Lives Of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculp-
tors and Architects, trans. by Gaston Duc de Vere, Vol. IV
(London: Philip Lee Warner, 1913), P. 134.

 

2Gustavo Frizzoni, "L'art Italiana nella Galleria Nazionale
di Londra," Archivio Storico Italiano Series IV, 4 (1879):
256.

 

3Ibid., p. 257.

4Rab Hatfield, "Five Early Renaissance Portraits," Art Bulle-
tin 47 no. 3 (September, 1965): 327 note 31.

48

 

49

symbolizes either the death Of Cleopatra or that Of Simonetta
Vespucci cannot be known. The particular position of the
snake, "wound around her neck" as noted by Vasari, differs
from other representations of Cleopatra in the Renaissance.
She is generally shown holding the snake at her breast. But
because Vasari identifies a woman with an asp around her

neck as CleOpatra and specifically mentions the configura-
tion Of the snake, it seems reasonable to accept with Friz-

zoni that Simonetta Vespucci is indeed the beautiful head of

 

CleOpatra. Two additional details in the painting may
strengthen the identification. The pearls studding the hair-
piece perhaps refer to CleOpatra's legendary banquet. TO
demonstrate to Marc Antony her extravagance, CleOpatra dis-
solved an expensive pearl in vinegar and drank it.5 The

red ornaments in her hair look like strawberries. If so,
these, tOO, could be a small clue to the sitter's identity,
as one meaning attached to the strawberry in the Renaissance

was that Of seductive power. The strawberry symbolized the

 

5Giovanni Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, trans. by G.
Guarino (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963),
p. 195.

 

50

sensual pleasures of the world because however much one con-
sumed, one's hunger was not satisfied.6

Few representations of CleOpatra dating from the Renais-
sance can be located. With the exception of Piero di Cosi-
mo's portrait and a cassone panel painted by Neroccio di
Landi all portrayals are from the sixteenth century. Scat-
tered references to CleOpatra occur in Vasari's Liygg and
from these and extant examples it can be assumed that the
consort of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony figured as part Of
the Renaissance interest in antiquity. Ancient history and
mythological subjects were known through the Middle Ages,
but by the middle of the fifteenth century a substantial

component Of classical references had entered everyday

 

6Mirella Levi d'Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance:iBo-
tanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence: Leo S.
OlseckiT’l977)? p. 366. That the pearls and strawberries
have any relevance as attributes of CleOpatra is strictly
conjecture. Each held other meanings. The pearl was consi-
dered a gem Of purity. Lightbrown, Sandro Botticelli, l:
73. The strawberry was a symbol Of Paradise, and according
to Ovid, men fed on strawberries during the golden age.
d'Ancona, p. 366. These clues would be subtle, yet Piero can
be cryptic. The flower beneath the feet of Mary and Eliza-
beth in the Visitation has been identified as a wallflower.
The wallflower was created when Ion, after hunting a wild
boar, spent the night with the Ionic nymphs who offered him
a chaplet of wallflowers. The flower is a symbol of love,
earthly and divine. Such sentiments are apprOpriate for the
Visitation, and the boar between Elizabeth and St. Abbot
completes the anecdote. d'Ancona, p. 270.

 

 

51

life.7 Cassone panels depict battles and victors' triumphs
celebrating deeds Of antiquity. The triumphs of Roman
generals are the most common subjects on cassone in the second
half of the century. These events were thought to be exam-
ples worthy Of emmulation. Allegorical tales encouraged
the bride's humble submission to her lord and master.8 Birth
trays narrate classical tales. Although painting Of cassone
chests declined after 1530,9 classical subject matter of
course continued. Maiolica became more figurative: by 1510
the whole surface of a vase or dish could be covered with a
picture, usually from classical mythology or history.10
Cleopatra is specifically mentioned among subjects appearing
on maiolica.11
The image Of Cleopatra appears in drawings and engrav-
ings as well. Michelangelo apparently drew a CleOpatra. In

the life of Madonna PrOperzia di Rossi, Vasari reports that

"it is no long time since Messer Tommaso Cavalieri, a Roman

 

7John POpe-Hennessy and Keith Christiansen, "Secular Painting
in 15th Century Tuscany: Birth Trays, Cassone Panels, and
Portraits," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer
1980): 12.

 

8Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1974), p. 40.

 

9Paul Schubring, Cassoni, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Verlag von Karl
W. Hiersemann, 1923).

10Bernard Rackham, Guide to Italian Maiolica Victoria and A1-
bert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1933): P. 18.

 

 

11Schubring, 1: 213.

52

gentleman sent to the Lord Duke Cosimo (in addition to a
drawing by the hand Of the divine Michelangelo, wherein is a
CleOpatra) another drawing by the hand of Sofonisba [Anguis-

ciola]..."12 Michelangelo's CleOpatra is lost although a

 

drawing by "Andrea di Michelangelo" of a bust representing

CleOpatra recalls the over-elaborated and highly finished

13

designs of Michelangelo for Cavalieri. Engravings depic-

ting Cleopatra by Jacopo di Barbari (Venice, 1440-1515),14

JacOpO Francia (Bologna, 1487-1557),15 and the Master of the

year 151516 are examples that show her with the snake held

to her breast. Three small engravings by Nicoletto da
Modena, Leda and the Swan, The Rape of EuroEé: and CleOpa-

tra,17 place CleOpatra in the company of two other images

 

 

Of sexuality.
Literary sources present the most complete characteri-

zation of this famous queen. Plutarch's Lives was published

 

12Vasari, Vol. 5, p. 128.

13Bernard Berenson, The Drawings Of the Florentine Painters,
3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938) 2:
128.

 

14Arthur Hind, Early Italian Engraving Part I Florentine En-
ggavings and Anonymous Pfints of Other Schools, Vol. V (New
York: M. Knoedler and CO., 1938), plate 714.

 

 

lsIbid., plate 813.

l6Ibid., plate 861.

l7Ibid., Vol. v1, plate 681.

53

18

in Florence in 1470, and Boccaccio had written Concerning

Famous Women between 1355 and 135919 which continued to be

 

 

much read in the Renaissance. The intellectual complexity

Of Piero di Cosimo's "Early History Of Man" suggests a
familiarity with the texts Of Pliny, Ovid, and Vitruvius,20
although Vasari's life Of Piero di Cosimo does not leave the
impression that Piero was learned. Piero's painting Of a
woman with a snake around her neck could derive from either
Boccaccio's or Plutarch's account of Cleopatra's life. But
the prevalence of antique heroes in Quattrocento painting
would more likely indicate a literary or folk tradition rather

than a specific text as a resource for Piero. Still texts

 

such as Plutarch's Liyoo and Boccaccio's Concerning Famous
Womon clearly helped to shape the visual tradition. Only
one reference to a presumed ancient image of Cleopatra is
known to me. A colossal recumbent statue was mistakenly
identified as "CleOpatra." Vasari, in his preface to the
third part Of his Liyoo lists "certain excavated antiquities
cited by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the Lao-

cOOn, the Hercules, the Great Torso of the Belvedere, and

 

18Schubring, 1: 34.

19Guido A. Guarino in the introduction to Concerning Famous
Women, by Giovanni Boccaccio, trans. by G.A. Guarino (New

Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. xxxi.

 

20Erwin Panofsky, "Early History Of Man," Studies in Iconol-
ogy (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).

 

54

likewise the Venus, the Cleopatra, the Apollo."21 Knowledge
Of these works overcame "the dryness, hardness and sharpness
of manner," which had been left by the excessive study of
masters such as Piero della Francesco, Andrea Mantegna and
22

Sandro Botticelli.

Neroccio di Landi's The Visit Of Cleopatra to Antony

 

(1470) and the companion Battle of Actium follow Plutarch's

 

account quite closely. Neroccio paints the arrival of
CleOpatra.

She came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with
gilded stern and outspread sails Of purple, while oars
Of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes
and harps. She herself lay all under a canOpy of cloth
of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beauti-

ful young boys, like painted cupids, stood on each

side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea
nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some
working at the rOpes...that Venus was come to feast
with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia.23

He chooses the episode in CleOpatra's life with the most
pageantry. The lavish use Of gold for decoration and the
festive scene entertain and delight.24 The meeting between
Antony and CleOpatra as portrayed on this cassone panel

teaches the same lesson stated directly in panels showing

 

21Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 81.

2211518.

23Plutarch, The Lives Of the Noble Grecians and Romans,
trans. by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (Chica-
go: EncyclOpedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), p. 757.

24Gertrude Coor, Neroccio de' Landi 1447-1500 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 29.

 

55

the meeting between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon: the

25 Neroccio

bride must humbly submit to her lord and master.
makes no distinction between the winning and losing side in
the battle of Actium. The whole representation is a fairy

tale.26

And it is difficult to ascribe Cleopatra's sins to
the woman that Piero di Cosimo has painted: like Neroccio,
he speaks only Of her beauty and charms. These paintings
avoid her wickedness and retain a seeming naiveté which
characterizes Quattrocento secular painting}.7
But Renaissance scholars Of ancient history were not
uncritical. Julius Caesar had been much admired in the four-
teenth century as the legendary founder of Florence and a
symbol Of virtue. In the fifteenth century, however, greater
familiarity with ancient texts and a more sharply defined

republican sentiment prompted the humanists to call Julius

28 . . .
Caesar a tyrant. Boccacc1o 1n Concerning Famous Women,

 

takes liberties with his sources in order to present exem-
plars Of virtue and vice in his biographies. The lives of
women who were loyal in love such as Penelope, Dido, and

Artemisia would contrast with the lustful ones of CleOpatra,

 

25Ca1lmann, p. 40.

26Coor, p. 28.

27Schubring, 1: 178.

28Callmann, p. 47.

56

Venus, Helen and Faustina Augustus.29 He emphasizes Cleo-
patra's appetites and passes moral judgment. "She gained
glory for almost nothing else than her beauty, while on the
other hand she became known throughout the world for her
greed, cruelty and lustfulness."3o Compare his account Of
the meeting between CleOpatra and Marc Antony to Plutarch's
and Neroccio's. "Later, when Caesar had already been killed
and Brutus and Cassius overcome, and Antony was advancing
toward Syria, she went to meet him and easily ensnared that

3; Boccaccio

lustful man with her beauty and wanton eyes."
embellishes Plutarch's account with fascinating anecdotes
and imaginary conversations. His refusal to discuss "the
Arabian ointments, the perfumes Of Saba, and the drunken
revels" further entices the reader.32 CleOpatra's life is
more interesting than that Of some Of the virtuous women
Boccaccio discusses, and this may explain her appeal.
Lucretia's virtuous suicide is a story told Often on

33

cassone panels in the Quattrocento. Interest continues

 

29Guarino, p. xvi.

3oBoccaccio, p. 192.

311bid., p. 193.

321bid., p. 194.

33Schubring, 2: plates 21, 141, 261, 304, 469, 565, 644,
and 735.

S7

in the Cinquecento, and there is some evidence to suggest
that images Of Lucretia and CleOpatra were paired. Two
panels by Giampietrino in the Kress Collection (c. 1525),

a Lucretia (K346, Madison, WI) and CleOpatra (K347, Lewis-

 

 

burg, PA), are presumed to be pendants: they are the same
size (95.6 x 70.8 cm, 94.3 x 71 cm respectively) and were
together when they first attracted attention in this cen-
tury.34 Both women were renowned for their beauty and com-
mitted suicide to protect their honor. Lucretia stabbed
herself with a knife to avoid the tarnishing of her virtue
and to set an example for other women.35 Cleopatra refusing
to submit to the conqueror Octavian put two asps to her
veins.36 Lucretia's chastity should shame the wanton Cleo-
patra, yet Giampietrino treats the women similarly. The
half-length figures are partially nude draped discreetly at
the pubis. The beautiful, but not individualized faces

could be interchanged with one another or for that matter,

with Giampietrino's Mary Magdalene. There is another half-

 

1ength CleOpatra in the Kress Collection by Giampietrino

(K1238 Oberlin, on c. 1530-40).37 This image includes the

 

34Fern Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection
Italian Schools XV-XVI Centugy (London: Phaidon, 1968),
p. 136.

 

 

3SBoccaccio, p. 102.

361bid., p. 196.

37Shapley, p. 137.

58

basket reported to have contained the asp which Cleopatra

had smuggled into her monument. Plutarch appears to be the

38

source for this motif. The two snakes in the Lewisburg

Cleopatra are a convention perhaps drawn from Boccaccio's

account.39

 

Vasari, in his life of Domenico Puligo, mentions Puli-
go's production of CleOpatras and Lucretias. "The same
master made many other paintings, which are dispersed among
houses of citizens, and in particular some wherein may be
seen a half-length figure of Cleopatra, causing an asp to
bite her on the breast, and Others wherein the Roman Lucre-

40

tia killing herself with a dagger." He makes no distinc-

tion between the relative virtues of the two women nor

does Puligo. The allegorical significance of Cleopatra and
Lucretia, respectively if not visually apparent must then
be assumed to have been known from their biographies.

Boccaccio justifies the inclusion of less virtuous
women in his biographies.

...Nor do I want the reader to think it out of place
if together with Penelope, Lucretia, and Sulpicia
who were very chaste matrons, they find Medea, Flora
and Sempronia, who happened to have very strong but
destructive characters. For it is not my intention
to give the word 'famous' so strict a meaning that

it will always seem to signify 'virtuous,' but rather
to give it a wider sense, ...and to consider as

 

38Plutarch, p. 779

39
Boccaccio, p. 196.

4oVasari, Vol. IV, p. 282.

59

famous those women whom I know to have become re-

nowned to the world through any sort of deed.41
CleOpatra's fame rests on her charms. Of her actual beauty
Plutarch says:

...It was not in itself so remarkable that none could

compare with her, or that no one could see her without

being struck by it, but the contact of her presence,

if you lived with her was irresistable: the attrac-

tion of her person, joining with the charm of her con-

versation and the character that attended all she

said or did, was something bewitching.42

At the beginning of the fifteenth century large mural
decorations celebrating the deeds of famous peOple became
popular.43 One hundred years later this type Of decoration
still enjoyed pOpularity, and images of CleOpatra are among

the fragments of two such cycles now in the Chigi-Saracini

Collection. Cleopatra, The Vestal Virgin Carrying Fire,

 

 

and the Vestal Virgin Tuccia (c. 1500-1510) attributed to

 

Girolamo di Benvenuto form part of a larger cycle adorning
a cabinet or studiolo of some member of the Sienese aris-

tocracy.44 It is possible that the Numidian King Jugurta

 

and the Roman Emperor Augustus attributed to Benvenuto also

 

belong to this cycle, although it is equally likely that

Tuccia, Cleopatra and the Vestal Virgin Carrying Water formed

 

 

 

 

l . .. ...
Boccacc1o, p. xxv11, xv111.

42Plutarch, p. 757.

43Hatfield, p. 320.

44Olga Pujmanova, "Italian Primatives in Czechoslovak Collec-
tions," Burlington Magazine 119 (August 1977): 548.

 

60

a series of exclusively female Allegories. Remnants of
another cycle of 'Famous PeOple' attributed to Matteo Bal-

ducci (c. 1500-1510) include Judith, Cleopatra and SOphonis-

 

 

23.45

The image of CleOpatra combined with those of famous
virgins in the Benvenuto cycle suggest the allegorical con-
trast of virtue and vice. On the other hand, the women in
the fragments from the Balducci cycle are famous for the
effect their beauty and charm had on military events. Here,
CleOpatra seems no less virtuous than Judith or SOphonisba.
The sexual meanings of these Renaissance "CleOpatras" appear
to vary. Physical beauty Often emphasized by nudity remains
constant. Neroccio and Plutarch visualize her "dressed as
Venus...come to feast with Bacchus." Boccaccio judges her
harshly and her image juxtaposed with one of Lucretia could

have been the visual equivalent Of his moralizing. Piero di

Cosimo's Simonetta Vespucci called "CleOpatra" by Vasari is

 

a sensual portrait-like image.

 

451bid.

The Fantasy Portrait in the Renaissance Household

Piero di Cosimo's "head of CleOpatra" and the so-called
portraits of Simonetta Vespucci seem, in fact, to belong to
a whole class of portrait-like images celebrating feminine
beauty, which might be called fantasy portraits. Probably
not meant to represent particular individuals they nonethe-
less conform with Quattrocento portrait convention. The
quasi-abstract character of the profile portrait becomes
exaggerated and mannered in these images.1 Such examples
as those attributed to the school of Botticelli, Piero di

Cosimo's Simonetta Vespucci and Portrait of a Woman by

 

 

Raffaelino del Garbo all differ from portraits assumed to
be of individual women in details of costume and hairstyle,
and Piero's portrait displays a fanciful attitude also
toward the landscape background. Allegorical or mythologi-
cal meanings, in addition to the desire to please, or even
sometimes inflame the beholder, may have engendered the
creation and replication of such fantasies. The attrac-
tiveness and the utility of the fantasy portraits may have
been seen as like that of the many nudes and images of

Venus that Botticelli is supposed to have painted. "For

 

IJean Lipman, "The Florentine Profile Portrait in the Quat-
trocento," Art Bulletin 18 (March 1936): 67.

 

61

62

various houses throughout the city he painted round pictures,
and many female nudes," Vasari says, "of which there are
still two at Castello, a villa of Duke Cosimo's: one repre-
senting the birth of Venus...: and likewise another Venus,
whom the Graces are covering with flowers as a symbol of
spring."2 Robert Lightbrown suggests that:

The charm of such pictures was their delight to the

eye, just as Politian's verses on the birth of Venus

delight, not by the acuteness or profundity of

philosophical thought, but by the caress of their

sound and the bright fancy of their imagery, which

stimulates the mind's eye and ear into bodying out a

picture as radiant as Botticelli's.3

Evidently not a portrait of a particular Florentine
woman, a fantasy portrait would probably correspond to an
ideal type or pattern of feminine beauty in the repertoire
of the individual artist. The type of beauty in the Frank-
fort, Berlin, and National Gallery panels compares favorably

with Botticelli's Venus, Pallas, or figures from the Prima-

vera. On the other hand, the Pitti Portrait of a Lady attri-

 

buted to the school of Botticelli features a much plainer
woman. Piero di Cosimo's woman with a snake around her neck

is the same sensual type found in his Death of Procris or

 

Venus and Mars: young women with high foreheads, perfect

features, red—blond hair which is elaborately braided and

 

2Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculp-
tors, and Architects, trans. by Gaston Duc de Vere, Vol. III
(London: Philip Lee Warner, 1912), p. 248.

 

 

3Ronald Lightbrown, Sandro Botticelli Complete Catalogue, 2
vols. (London: Paul Elek, 1978), 1: 89.

 

63

adorned with jewels: small round breasts draped with embroi-
dered shawls. His portraits of Guiliano da San Gallo and
Francesco Giamberti would seem to omit none of the sitter's
flaws in appearance. The face in Raffaellino's portrait,

on the other hand, is of a type, and comparable to profile

features of the Madonna in Filippino Lippi's Vision of St.

 

Bernard or to Raffaelino's own Mary Magdalene. Portraits of

 

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries perhaps always idealize
or generalize the sitter in some way or other: the posthu-
mous, commemorative portraits are especially likely to do so.
But particular features can survive this process of idealiza-
tion or generalization. For example, the up-turned nose,
short upper lip and prominent chin in Pollaiuolo's Milan

Portrait of a Woman, while not detracting from her charm,

 

could nevertheless have been seen in Pollaiuolo's time as
imperfect features. In a female portrait attributed to
Pollaiuolo now in the National Gallery London,4 the artist
has evidently enhanced the sitter's original appearance, but
an intricate jewelled cap, elaborate brocade dress, and an
exceptionally high forehead cannot alter the prominence of
the nose.

The elaborate and at times free-flowing hairstyles and

lavish use of jewelry in the fantasy portrait overstep

 

4Raimond Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools
of Paintin , Vol. XIiTThe Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929),
p. 338 igure 213.

 

64

conventional ornateness seen in Quattrocento feminine por-
traiture. The intertwining braids of Piero's woman's head-
dress are matched only by the intricate woven hair of
Leonardo's studies of heads, possibly for Loda,5 Long braids
meet forming a kind of pendant in the Frankfort fantasy por-
trait. The only women that Botticelli paints who wear two
separate braids are biblical and mythological figures: in
the Sistine Chapel, one of the daughters of Jethro: in the

Birth of Venus, the nymph standing on the seashore.6 The

 

women portrayed in the school of Botticelli Frankfort and

Berlin portraits and Raffaellino's Portrait of a Woman wear

 

their hair down and loosely arranged. Neroccio's sitter also
wears her blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders. It
was the custom of young women to wear their hair hanging

free and of married women to dress theirs in a knot.7
However, Neroccio's sitter lacks the abandoned appearance of
the fantasy portraits; her hair is capped on top and neatly

arranged. The Opulence and liberty of the fantasy portrait

contrasts with the decorum of Quattrocento portraits that

 

5Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters,
2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 2:
128 figures 543 and 545.

 

6E. Bertaux, "Botticelli Costumier," La Revue de 1'Art 21
(1907): 276.

 

7Gertrude Coor, Neroccio de' Landi 1447-1500 (Princeton:
Princeton Univergity Press, 1961), p. 59 note 193.

 

65

are supposedly of actual people.8 Piero di Cosimo substitutes
a snake for the pendant. Strings of pearls are woven in her
hair. In the authentic portrait, jewels generally rest on

tOp of the head or embellish a cap.9 Elaborate jewelry can
appear in Quattrocento portraiture, but the ornaments serve

a different purpose. For example, a jewelled brush bearing

a Sforza motto decorates the headdress of Bianca Maria Sforza
in her portrait (c. 1490) by Ambrogio de Predis. The brush
and her pendant are listed in an inventory of the Sforza

family10

and were probably included in the portrait as a
means of identifying the sitter and proclaiming dynastic
power and authority. The cameo of Apollo and Marsyas worn
by the Frankfort figure cannot be used to identify the
patron of the painting as a Medici:11 the cameo was so famous
that the artist probably appropriated the image to decorate
his beauty.

The opulent costumes of these portrait-like images

differ from the courtly splendor displayed in Predis's Bianca

Maria Sforza no less than from the bourgeois elegance of

 

Domenico Ghirlandaio's Giovanna Tornabuoni. They suggest

 

8Bertaux, p. 277.

91bid., p. 278.

10Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2
vols. (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1979), l: 380.

llLightbrown, 2: 117.

66

another realm, quite apart from that of the daily life of
even the Medici or other noble families. Festivals, tourna-
ments, jousts and carnivals were celebrated with much pomp
and pageantry. The artists played a role in the prepara-
tions: Botticelli painted Guiliano's standard; Vasari goes
to great lengths describing Piero di Cosimo's Car of Death.12
"Piero, in his youth, being fanciful and extravagant in in-
vention, was much employed for masquerades that are held
during the Carnival, and he became very dear to the young
noblemen of Florence, having improved their festivals much
in invention, adornment, grandeur, and pomp."13 Engravings
of men wearing fantastic helmets used in pageants illustrate
14

the highly imaginative costumes that might have been worn.

Andrea Verrocchio's profile relief Alexander the Great and

 

Leonardo's drawing of a profile bust of a warrior in fanciful

5 are works of art that

armor (after Verrochio's relief)l
possibly take their inspiration from the giostre. Triumphs
of antique heroes were celebrated, including a Triumph of

Augustus after his victory over Cleopatra, and records of

 

12Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 128, 129.

l31bid., p. 127.

14Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engravings Part I Florentine
Engravings and Anonymous Prints of Other Schools, Vol. I
(New York: M. Knoedler and CO., 1938), Plate 53.

 

15W.R. Valentiner, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Italian
Gothic and Early Renaissance SculptureTDetroit Institute of
Arts, 1938), p. 54.

 

67

these triumphs are common subjects of cassone panels.16 The
same Piero di Cosimo who delighted Florence with his dread
Car of Death could have equally amused his patron with a
portrait of a woman with a snake wrapped around her neck.

A. Warburg, on the basis of a 1466 description of costumes
worn in giostre and pageants suggests that the Frankfort '
portrait and the allegorical portrait attributed to the
school of Botticelli in the Cook Collection represent Simon-
etta idealized as a nymph}.7 Whether these fantasy portraits
are permanent records of a fugitive festival or pageant
cannot be known. Certainly the paintings and the festive
decorations both reflect a desire for elaboration in a fan-
tastic vein.

But the half-length figure, however fantastic, still
suggests a portrait image. The standard half-length form of
the independent portrait is in fact used also for images of
sacred figures.18 In a portrait context the figure, follow-
ing convention, is painted before a landscape or architec-
tural background. The Madonna in half-length confronts the

worshipper with the reality of her presence while maintaining

 

16Paul Schubring, Cassoni, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Verlag von Karl
W. Hiersemann, 1923), 1: 59.

l7Lightbrown, 2: 116.

18Rona Goffen, "Icon and Vision: Giovanni Bellini's Half-
Length Madonnas" Art Bulletin 57 (December 1975): 495.

 

68

the mystery of divinity. The half-length figure suggests
the partial knowledge of god.19 Only Giovanni Bellini and
the Venetians used this form for the Madonna,2o but, por-
trait-like images of saints exist in the Florentine tradi-
tion. Images of Mary Magdalene by Piero di Cosimo and Raf-
faellino may appear less devout than Bellini's half-length
Madonnas. The Venetian half-length Madonnas wear simple
garments: sumptuous texture is reserved for the cloth of
honor. The Florentine Magdalenes, particularly Raffael-
lino's, appear to be more like the idealized beauties in the
fantasy portraits. Their long hair is worn down on the
shoulders and is adorned with embroidered scarves or pearls.

Only the unguent jars distinguish these images of Mary Mag-

dalene from portraits or fantasy portraits. St. John the

 

Evangelist (Honolulu) by Piero di Cosimo is similar to his

 

Magdalene in composition and facial type. The earlier pro-
file of St. John resembles the silhouette of "Cleopatra" and
the sensual appeal of the bare chest and fur drape is similar
to that of the breasts and snake. Savonarola objected to
such treatment of holy images. "The quality of the gods
worshipped in Florence can be seen...in the pictures of

those gods, for when youths pass someone in the street they
say, 'there goes the Magdalen' or 'that one is San Giovanni'

because certain actual peOple are represented as the saints

 

19Ibid., p. 498.

201bid., p. 495.

69

by painters."21 Savonarola also criticized luxurious dress
in religious images. "The artists paint the Virgin...dressed
and ornamented as if she were a harlot when she actually was
attired as a poor woman, very simply. Such things can cause
great harm."22
Intimate in scale, these portrait-like images were pro-
bably privately owned and kept in the house. Bellini's
Madonna paintings were part of the studio repertoire of com-
positions and not painted for individual patrons.23 Vasari
in his life of Domenico Puligo seems to make a distinction
between portraits painted from life and other pictures such
as the half-length portrait-like images of CleOpatra and Lu-
cretia. He cites specific examples of portraits painted
from life. For example, one of Monsignore Messer Piero
Carnesecchi, or the Florentine Barbara, "a famous and most
lovely courtesan."24 But in summing up Puligo's career,

Vasari says: "...since it was his profession to attend

rather to pictures of Our Lady, portraits, and other heads,

 

than great works, he gave up almost all his time to such

 

21Ronald Steinberg, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Florentine Art,
and Renaissance Historiography (Athens, Ohio} Ohio Univer-
sity Press, 1977), p. 51.

 

 

221bid.

23Goffen, p. 512.

24Vasari, Vol. IV, p. 282.

70

things."25 If "other heads" can be interpreted to mean

CleOpatras, Lucretias and other portrait-like images, there
would seem to have been a kind of industry developed in the
production of such works.

AdOpting the portrait form, busts and half-length
figures decorated interiors and household items. Generalized
facial features, often rudimentary execution, and a repeti-
tiousness in the types of image distinguish this decorative
class from the independent panel portraits. There are many
examples of ceilings decorated with bust length figures of
men and women in profile. This type of decoration was common

26 In the latter half

in all of Lombardy and Western Emilia.
of the Quattrocento, maiolica was being adOpted not merely

as part of the useful furniture of life but also in conjunc-
tion with paintings, sculpture, silversmith's work and em-
broidery, as a means of providing an environment of beauty.27
The human form played a leading part in the decoration.
Single figures or busts occur, either without particular
significance or representing persons in ancient or modern

history. Moralizing inscriptions often accompany the figure.

Potters evidently had stock designs to which suitable names

 

ZSIbid., p. 283.

26Federico Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery
Vol, I (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1976), p. 295.

27Bernard Rackham, Italian Maiolica (London: Faber and
Faber, Ltd., 1963), p. 12.

 

71

and mottoes could be appended.28 The ideal beauties on
the maiolica plates are simplified versions of the fantasy
portrait. Mirror frames composed as portraits of ideal
beauties suggest the "concept of woman's beauty as a mirror
in whose reflection the image of the true self is re-

29

vealed."

A different meaning is attached to the Martelli Mirror.

 

Made in the last quarter of the fifteenth century in Mantua,
the bronze relief Opposes a Bacchante in left profile with

her breast exposed pressing milk into a rhyton and a Satyr

30

in right profile holding a goblet. The relief is regarded

as an allegory of reproduction in which natural instinct
is presented as a stimulus towards fulfillment of a necessary
law.31 The iconography of a woman squeezing her breast is

also found in the Allegorical Portrait of a Woman attributed
32

 

to the school of Botticelli in the Cook Collection.

 

ng. Rackham, Guide to Italian Maiolica Victoria and Albert

Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1933): p. 1?.

 

29For example, a maiolica frame from the Salting Bequest, and
a cartapesta frame attributed to the workshop of Neroccio di
Landi, both in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

John POpe-Hennessy, ”A Cartapesta Mirror Frame," Burlington
Magazine 92 (1950): 290.

 

 

3oJ. Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols. (London: Her Majesty's
Stationery Office? 1964), 1: 325.

 

 

311bid., p. 327.

32Lightbrown, 2: 155.

72

Ulmann suggests that the picture is an allegory of fruit-
fulness.33

Other portrait-like images of a woman with one breast
covered and the other bared have been regarded as portraits

of courtesans. Bartolomeo Veneto's Frankfort Portrait of a

 

Woman had been identified as Guilia Farnese, mistress of
POpe Alexander VI, but appears to have been painted in Fer-
rara for Lucrezia Borgia between 1505 and 1507 and is among

34 The

a series of emblematic portraits painted by Veneto.
meaning of the symbolic flowers and attributes in these
paintings remains a puzzle. The sexual meaning of such
paintings and Giorgione's gaugg may be something quite

different. Egon Verheyen believes that the motif signifies

the antithesis between pudicitia and voluptas and that
35

 

 

Giorgione's portrait is a marriage allegory. The motif
of the bare and covered breast occurs in other media sugges-
ting the currency of the imagery. A glazed terra cotta bust

of a woman attributed to Leonardo36 and a marble bust of a

 

331pm.

34J. Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, Bollin-
ger Series 12 National Gallery of Art (New York: Pantheon,
1966), p. 266.

 

35Egon Verheyen, "Der Sinngehalt von Giorgiones Laura,"
Pantheon 26 (May/June, 1968): 227.

 

36Leonardo da Vinci (New York: Reynal and Company, 1956),
p. 196.

 

73

woman by the workshop of Bernardo Rossellino,37 are two exam-

ples. Neither of the women appears to be wearing contempor-
ary clothing, and the "Rossellino" subject wears her hair
down on the shoulders. If the covered and bare breast sym-
bolize chastity and sexual pleasure respectively, then these
portrait-like images, like the marriage cassone, may have
been apprOpriate celebrations of a marriage. "From Boc-
caccio's admonitions, we learn that the ideals of chastity
and virginity in girls were not considered, by the ordinary
layman at any rate, as violated by marriage."38 Such a
belief could explain Giampietrino's tandem images of Lucre-
tia and CleOpatra: one woman renowned for her chastity, the
other for her sexual prowess.

The portrait of a woman by Piero di Cosimo that Vasari
calls "CleOpatra" is perhaps a different type of sexual
image. Both breasts are exposed, and the portrait appears
to be sufficient as a beautiful image without allegorical
significance whether of Cleopatra or just a lovely woman.
The only comparable image known to me is a profile relief in

the style of Verrocchio in the Victoria and Albert Museum.39

 

37J. Pope-Hennessy, Luca della Robbia (Oxford: Phaidon,

1980), figure 62.

 

38Lightbrown, l: 85.

39A relief in Milan differs from this relief in that there is
no moulded border: it is oval; drapery in front of the figure
is absent; the right arm is truncated: and the shape of the
ear is altered. J. POpe-Hennessy, Catalogue of Victoria and
Albert Museum, p. 168.

 

 

74

The finely rendered features suggest that the relief was not
intended as a perfunctory part of a decorative scheme. The
nudity in this relief and Piero di Cosimo's panel is another
characteristic of a fantasy rather than authentic portrait.
The independent portrait was a family record: a statement of
family connections. Nudity would have been an inconceivable
liberty in a female portrait at the end of the Quattrocen-
tro.40

How, then, would the sensual beauty of Piero di Cosimo's
painting have been perceived in Quattrocento Florence? Two
sixteenth century accounts describing images which might be

considered fantasy portraits suggest an erotic function for

such images. Louis Vives in his Dialogues of 1532, pays an
41

 

imaginary visit to a beautiful home. Accompanied by Leon
Battista Alberti and Vitruvius, he describes in detail the
furnishings of each room. The atrium is embellished with
frescoes like those seen in Italian palaces.42 Of greater

interest is the bedroom which is decorated with tapestries

and pictures. "There are many images of the Virgin Mary and

 

40Mina Bacci, L'Opera Completa di Piero di Cosimo (Milan:
Rizzoli Editore, 1976). p. 86.

 

41Vives does not state the location of the house, however,
Bonnaffe concludes that it was in Bruges where Vives spent
a great deal of his life. Edmond Bonnaffe, Etudes sur la
Vingrivee de la Renaissance (Paris: Société Francaise
d'Editions d'Art L. Henry May, 1898), p. 107.

 

 

421bid., p. 108.

75

Jesus Christ; the others are of Narcissus, Euryalus, Adonis,

and Polyxene, all of which are very beautiful."43

The images
that Vives names reflect a range of subject matter. Narcis-
sus falls in love with his reflection and dies of exhaustion
and unsatisfied longing. Adonis' beauty proves fatal, and
Polyxena, claimed by the ghost of Achilles, is sacrificed at
his tomb in order to accompany her master to the other
world.44 Eurayle is one of the three Gorgons and appears to
be an anomalous image, although, in fact later Greek art
could portray Medusa, another Gorgon, as a beautiful woman.45
At any rate, it is the beauty of the figures and not the
subject matter that evidently impresses Vives. According to
Edmond Bonnaffe, it is an old belief dating from antiquity,
that women contemplating types of beauty placed around their
46

bed would be more apt to conceive beautiful children.

I I . . .
Bonnaffe's source, De la Beaute, was written in the Six-

 

teenth century by Gabriel Minut and dedicated to Catherine

de Medicis.47 Chapter five entitled ”Plusieurs femmes

 

431bid., p. 110.

44H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York: E.P.
Dutton and Co., Inc., 1959), p. 235.

 

4SIbid., p. 30.

46Bonnaffé, p. 110.

47Gabriel de Minut, De la Beauté Discours Divers avec "la
Paule-graphie" (Lyon: Barthelemi Honorat, 1587), republished
by Raretés Bibliographiques, Brussels: Imprimerie de A.
Mertins et Fils, 1865.

 

 

76

engendrent des enfans semblables a ce qu'elles s'imaginent

ou cequi leur est représenté devant leurs yeux"48 recounts
examples from history which 'prove' that what the woman sees
at the moment of conception influences the appearance of the
offspring. In the Old Testament story of Jacob, Jacob and
Laban agreed that all the spotted sheep and goats would be
Jacob's. To ensure the reproduction of such stock, Jacob
scored twigs and sticks and placed them around the watering
hole where the animals reproduced. The spotted images helped

49 A beautiful woman, white in face and

increase his flock.
body, was married to a king who was also fair. When she

gave birth to a baby blacker than any EthiOpian, the king‘
consulted the royal doctors. The culprit was a painting of

a Moor upon which she had gazed while performing the laudable
work of modest marriage. (Minut wonders why the king who

was so powerful, had not thought to change the painting in
his wife's bedroom.)so Another woman living in the time of
Charles the Fourth, gave birth to an infant who was as

shaggy as a bear: the explanation: she had looked upon a

portrait of St. John.51

 

481bid., p. 44.

491bid., p. 45.

5°Ibid., p. 46.

51Ibid., p. 47.

77

Whether such beliefs were seriously held is a matter of
speculation. Two cassone panels by Matteo di Giovanni de-

picting Antiochus and Stratonice provide slight circumstan-

 

tial evidence.52 Each panel includes a bedroom scene. The
beds are decorated with independent paintings apparently
hung on the wall directly over the beds or attached to the
bed frames. Because they are sketchy details, the precise
images cannot be discerned. One image is a full length
clothed female figure possibly clutching a knife. If this
is the gesture, an identification as Lucretia is probable.
Other framed images in the bedroom scenes appear to be typi-

cal devotional Madonnas. Carpaccio's Arrival of the Ambassa-

 

dors of Britain at the Court of Brittany clearly shows a

 

Madonna on the wall. In his Dream of St. Ursula, a painted

 

statue of a nude Venus and a water carrier adorn the door
mantles, and what appears to be a devotional painting hangs
next to the martyr's bed.

A pattern emerges among the images reported by Vives
and Minut and the details observed in Matteo's cassone panels
and Carpaccio's paintings. Different levels of experience
appear to be represented in the same room; the anagogical
image of Mary is perhaps meant to counter the sensual message

of profane images. Botticelli's Primavera and Minerva and

 

 

 

SZSchubring, 2: plates 474 and 475.

78

the Centaur hung in the same room with a Madonna.53 The Re-

 

naissance household apparently acknowledged both the spiritu-
al and sensual aspects of morality. The prevalence of such
profane images disturbed Savonarola who condemned among other
things, lascivious paintings of nudes, "indecent writings"
(e.g. Boccaccio and Petrarch), and musical instruments to

54

the fire of Vanities in 1497 and 1498. Piero di Cosimo's

Simonetta Vespucci very likely painted close to this time,

 

may be seen as a refined example of this type of profane
image.

There is no rein on Piero's imagination in Simonetta

 

Vespucci. The portrait painted during the 14905 is among a

 

group of works that exhibit Piero's eccentric vision and
establish his independence as an artist. The question remains
whether the evocative combination of the profile of a beauti-
ful woman and a stormy sky was fortuitous or whether Piero
attempted to take the profile portrait tradition as far as

it could go with a highly suggestive landscape and the provo-
cative nudity of the subject. In any case, Simonetta Ves-
pgggi is not a portrait that was intended as a family record
of an individual. The woman probably represents Cleopatra,
and the inscription "Simonetta Vespucci” was very likely

added at a later date by a Vespucci family member in order to

 

53Webster Smith, "On the Original Location of the Primavera,"
Art Bulletin 57 (March 1975): 35.

 

S4Steinberg, p. 6, 7.

79

associate a remote ancestor with the exotic Queen of Egypt.
The portrait's sensual appeal must have been recognized in
the Renaissance and is no less compelling today. The threat-
ening snake and foreboding cloud leave a haunting impression
which is contradicted by the woman's beauty and the decora-

tive appearance of the panel. Piero di Cosimo's Simonetta

 

Vespucci is "pleasing through its beauty," and its "strange,
55

 

horrible and unexpected invention."

 

55Vasari, Vol, IV, p. 128.

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