VisualizingLoveintheRenaissance
Lecture4:MediciMarriagesandBotticelli
Dr.SunnieEvers
February9,2016
Principal Members of the Medici Family
Giovanni di Bicci (1360-1429)
m. Piccarda Bueri
____________________________________________
Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464)
m. Contessina de’Bardi
Piero “the Gouty”
m. Lucrezia Tornabuoni
Giovanni
Lorenzo “the Mag”
(1442-92)
m. Clarice Orsini
Giuliano
(1453-78)
Lorenzo (1395-1440)
m. Ginevra Cavalcanti
Carlo
(illeg)
Piero Francesco
(1430-1467)
Lorenzo
Giovanni
m. Cat Sforza
Giulio
(Pope Clement VII)
Giovanni
(1475-1521)
Pope Leo X
Botticelli, La Primavera (Spring), Florence, Uffizi, c.1482
Commissioned for marriage of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (1463-1503)
Semirande d’Appiano on July 19, 1482 (originally planned for May); his father
was Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, second cousin to Lorenzo – he died and appointed
Lorenzo guardian of his son; his tutors were the humanists Marsilio Ficino and
Poliziano.
Combination of ancient and contemporary texts
Additive appearance
Creates a new mythology
Venus = goddess of love and beauty & protectress of marriage
Cupid (son of Venus and Mercury), blindfolded (love is blind)
Graces = attendants of Venus
Mercury = god of eloquence, son of nymph Maia (May), cloud disperser
Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici
Flora = goddess of spring (metamorphorsis of Chloris)
Chloris = nymph chased by Zephyrus, transforms into Flora to escape
Zephyrus = god of the west wind, herald of Venus
Laurel trees >> Lorenzo
Myrtle tree >> evergreen, sacred to Venus and marriage
Orange trees >> Medici palle ( orange grove in Medici Palace)
Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 737-40: “ On come Spring and Venus and Venus’ winged
Harbinger [Cupid] marching before, with Zephyr [west wind] and mother Flora a
pace behind him strewing the whole path in front with brilliant colors and filling
it with scents.”
Ovid, Fasti, V, 195-222: …I who am now am called Flora was formerly Chloris: a Greek
letter of my name is corrupted in the Latin speech. Chloris I was, a nymph of the
happy fields where as you have heard dwelt the fortunate men of old. Modesty
shrinks from describing my figure; but it procured the hand of a god for my
mother’s daughter. Twas spring, and I was roaming; Zephyrus caught sight of me;
I retired; he pursued and I fled; but he was stronger….However, he made amends
for his violence by giving me the name of bride, and in my marriage bed I have
naught to complain of. I enjoy perpetual spring; most buxom is the year ever;
ever the tree is clothed with leaves, the ground with pasture. In the fields that are
my dower, I have a fruitful garden, fanned by the breeze and watered by a spring
of running water. This garden by husband filled with noble flowers and said,
“Goddess be queen of flowers.” Oft did I wish to count the colors in the beds, but
could not; the number was past counting….I was the first to scatter new seeds
among the countless peoples; till then the earth had been of one color.”
Columella, De re rustica, X, 192-214: “…Now’s the time when all the world is
mating…the spirit of the world in Venus’ revel joins and headlong urged by
Cupid’s goads…hence hill, hence even the whole wide world is celebrating
spring; hence comes desire to man and beast and bird, and flames of love burn in
the heart and in the marrow rage, till Venus, satiated, impregnates their fruitful
members and a varied brood brings forth.”
Horace, Odes, I, 4: “Keen winter is breaking up at the welcome change to Spring and
Zephyr….Already Cytherean Venus leads her dancing bands…and the comely
Graces…tread the earth with tripping feet.”
Seneca, De beneficiis, I, iii: “…the Graces are three in number…are sisters…have their
hands interlocked…are smiling, youthful and virginal…are clad in loosened and
transparent garb…and hand in hand dance in a ring….Why?…For the reason that
a benefit passing in its course from hand to hand returns nevertheless to the giver;
the beauty of the whole is destroyed if the course is anywhere broken, and it has
most beauty if it is continuous and maintains an uninterrupted succession. In the
dance, nevertheless, an older sister has special honor, as do those who earn
benefits. They are young because the memory of benefits ought not to grow old.
They are maidens because benefits are pure and undefiled and holy in the eyes of
all; and it is fitting that there should be nothing to bind or restrict them, and so the
maidens wear flowing robes, and these, too, are transparent because benefits
desire to be seen…Mercury stands with them.”
Boccaccio, Decameron, prologue: “what seemed not less but more delightful than
anything else, a meadow of the shortest grass, so green that it seemed almost
black, all painted with perhaps a thousand different sorts of flowers, and enclosed
all around with greenest, flourishing orange and citrus trees, which still bore their
old fruit as well as their new and were also in blossom, so that not only did they
give pleasant shade to the eyes, but pleasure to the smell.”
Alberti, Della Pittura: “Let it wind itself into a coil as if desiring to knot itself and let it
wave in the air like unto flames: let part weave itself among the rest like a snake,
part grow to one side, part to the other….Let no part of the drapery be free from
movement. But let the movements be moderate and gentel…for this reason it will
be well to put into the painting the face of the wind Zephyr,…showing why the
drapery flutters. And thus another grace shall appear in that on the side struck by
the wind the bodies will show a good part of their naked forms, and on the other
side the draperies blown by the soft wind will flutter through the air….those three
young sisters whom Hesiod called Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, whom the
ancients represented dressed in loosened, transparent gowns, with smiling faces
and hands intertwined, to signify liberality.”
Alberti, De architectura:“Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts
within a body, according to definite number, outline and position, as dictated by
concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule of Nature.”
Botticelli, Camilla/Minerva and a Centaur, Florence, Uffizi, c. 1482:
Virgil,Aeneid
Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women), 39.
Female chastity and wisdom >< male aggression and sexuality
Botticelli, Madonna of the Magnificat, Florence, Uffizi, c. 1480-81; stream evokes
Baptism; pomegranate an attribute of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, who
brings spring and summer when she returns to earth each year; pomegranate =
symbol of resurrection, also symbol of church filled with the faithful.
Left page the canticle of song of Zachary (Luke 1:68-79)
“And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go
before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death:
To direct our feet into the way of peace.”
Right page: the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55):
“My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
Because he hath regarded the humility of his hand maid: for behold from
henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
Because he that is mighty hath done great things to me: and holy is his name.
And his mercy is from generation unto generations. To them that fear him.
He hath showed might in his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of
their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty
away.”
Christ points to humilitas (humility)
Apocalyptic woman, Apocalypse 12:1-5
“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and … on
her head a crown of 12 stars…And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule
all nations with an iron rod: and her son was taken up to God and to his throne.”
Botticelli, Birth of Venus, c. 1484 –86, originally thought to be a Medici commission for
country villa; recent scholarship connects it with the marriage of Annibale Bentivoglio
and Lucrezia d’Este in 1487 in Bologna. Lorenzo de’Medici attended and may have
suggested his favorite artist to Annibale. How did it end up in the Medici villa at
Castello? The Bentivoglio fled Bologna in 1506 when the papal armies of Julius II
advanced; perhaps Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici (Lorenzo’s son and future Leo X)
‘rescued’ it from the Bentivoglio palace and took it to Castello for safe-keeping.
Venus = almost life-size, contrapposto, nude, Venus pudica type. Cronus (Saturn)
castrated his father and threw his genitals into the sea, out of the foam
was born Venus. During this remarkable birth, a rose bush grew on land
as symbol of Venus and bloomed just as she stepped on land.
Zephyrus = god of west wind
Aura = goddess of soft breeze, Hora = goddess of summer (cornflowers/daisies)
Anemone = since antiquity known as the wind flower that blooms in spring
Orange grove in bloom
Homer, “To Aphrodite”:
Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful Aphrodite
I shall sing, to whose domain belong the battlements
Of all sea-laved Cyprus where, blown by the moist breath
Of Zephyrus
She was carried over the waves of the resounding sea
In soft foam. The gold-filleted Horae
Happily welcomed her and clothed her with heavenly raiment.
Poliziano, Stanze per la Giostra (1476-78)
And born with [the white foam]
In rare and joyous acts
A maiden with a heavenly race
By playful zephyrs is pushed to the shore.
She travels on a sea-shell; and it seems
That the heavens rejoice.
You might swear that the goddess
Came out of the waves
Squeezing with her right hand her hair
And covering the sweet fruit with the other.
Botticelli, Venus and Mars, NGA London; probably connected to a Vespucci wedding.
MarsilioFicino,Deamore,1469
“Marsisoutstandinginstrengthamongtheplanetsbecausehemakesmenstronger,
butVenusmastershim…Venus,wheninconjunctionwithMars,inoppositiontohim,
orinreception…oftencheckshismalignancy…sheseemstomasterandappease
Mars,butMarsnevermastersVenus.”
Lucretius,Dererumnatura,I.31-37
“Forthoualonecanstdelightmortalswithquietpeace,sinceMarsmightyinbattle
rulesthesavageworksofwar,whooftencastshimselfuponthylapwholly
vanquishedbytheever-livingwoundoflove,andthuslookingupwardwithshapely
neckthrownbackfeedshiseagereyeswithlove,gapinguponthee,goddess,andas
heliesbackhisbreathhangsonthylips.”
Lucian, Herodotos, 5: description of a lost painting by Aetion of Alexander the Great and
Roxana, the only woman Alexander really loved, later his wife.
“On the other side of the picture, more Loves play among Alexander’s armor; two are
carrying his spear, as porters do a heavy beam; two more grasp the handles of the shield,
tugging it along with another reclining on it, playing, I suppose, and then another has got
into the breast plate, which lies hollow part upwards.”
Roman Sarcophagus: Bacchus and Ariadne. Ariadne is deserted by Theseus on the island
of Nexos; Bacchus finds her, comforts her, falls in love and marries her.