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Portraits of Renaissance Women
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see also:
Leonardo da Vinci
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Leonardo da Vinci:
The Lady with the Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani)
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Leonardo da Vinci
Cecilia Gallerani
1484
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Most Leonardo-experts consider the young woman to be Cecilia
Gallerani, the mistress of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Her eyes
are turned towards her left shoulder, a pose which seems remarkably
unstrained for the angle at which her head is turned. The ease of
her posture is also suggested by the mellow gentleness of her
childlike face, and by the manner in which her tightly-combed hair
is wound around her chin like the flaps of a bonnet, its spherical
rhythm echoed and varied by the double curves of the necklace looped
twice around her neck. Her plainly arranged hair and averted gaze
lend the sitter an air of chaste respectabality. Elucidation of the
iconographical significance of the ermine, the sitter's attribute,
confirms this impression; the effect was evidently intended by both
artist and patron. As early as the third century after Christ, in
the moral bestiary of the "Physiologus", the ermine's white fur made
it a symbol of chastity and purity. As the Greek word for it is
(gale), a knowledge of Classics would enable the spectator to see
the name of the animal as a pseudo-etymological pun on the first two
syllables of the sitter's name (Gallerani). Witty conversational
rhetoric of this kind was popular at the courts of Italian princes,
and would often include puns on the names of important people.
Furthermore, the ermine was one of the emblems on Lodovico's coat of
arms; its purpose here was therefore to call attention to his
qualities and powers.
The artist's subtle modulation of the ermine's sinewy muscles and
emphasis of its extended claws draw attention to the animal's
predatory nature, which, though diametrically opposed to its moral
and religious significance, is consistent - even without recourse to
psychoanalysis - with its obvious sexual symbolism, a metaphor
reinforced by the vaginal symbolism of the slit sleeve. It is not
unusual to find the theme of sexual potency in Italian Renaissance
art (see Bronzino's Andrea Doria as Neptune); what is
interesting here is a ludic inclination in pointing to the equivocal
nature of conventional morality: a woman was required to be not only
chaste, but a devoted mistress.
The background, with the inscription "LA BELLE FERONIERE", was added
later, and was not painted by Leonardo. The patination of the oil
surface, however, intensifies the sharp outline and vivid presence
of the fragile figure with her long, slender hand.
The painting is mentioned in a letter from Cecilia Galleram to
Isabella d'Este, dated 29 April 1498. Isabella had asked Cecilia to
send her the painting. Cecilia replied that she was unable to
comply, since "it was painted at a time when she was still very
young; in the meantime, however, her appearance had completely
altered." It is probably correct to assume that Leonardo painted the
portrait when Cecilia became Lodovico's mistress, in other words,
shortly after 1481.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Cecilia Gallerani (detail)
1484
The ermine was a symbol of chastity and purity.
According to legend, it died if its white coat was soiled.
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see also:
Leonardo da Vinci
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Leonardo da Vinci:
Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
c. 1503-5
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa
(detail)
Motifs like the veil and "path of virtue" in the landscape background
suggest that Mona Lisa was a married woman rather than a mistress.
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This is probably the most famous Renaissance portrait. So many
cliches and trivi-alising stereotypes have come between it and the
spectator since it was painted, however, that it hardly seems
possible to view it afresh.
The title of the painting can be traced back to Giorgio Vasari, who
testified that Leonardo's sitter was Monna (= Madonna) Lisa (=
Elisabeta). Born in 1479 in Florence, she married the Marchese
Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo in 1495, whose name
provided the title usually given to the painting in Italy and
France: La Gioconda.
The painting's association with France began early. On 10 October
1517, it was seen at Cloux, near Amboise, by the Cardinal d'Aragon
and his secretary Antonio de Beatis. Vasari's testimony has been
called into question by Antonio de Beatis' own statement that
Leonardo showed him the painting and told him he had painted it at
the request of Giuliano de' Medici. This has caused some scholars to
conclude that the woman in the portrait is Giuliano de' Medici's
mistress.
This is hardly the place to discuss problems arising from these
contradictory reports, although it must said that the testimony of
Antonio de Beatis enjoys the advantage of greater authenticity.
Nonetheless, it seems highly unlikely that the sitter was the
mistress of a nobleman, since the veil she is wearing - a symbol of
"castitias", chastity - was a standard attribute in portraits of
married women; it may be seen, for instance, in Bartolommeo da
Veneto's Young Woman. Leonardo's sombrely dressed
young woman sits in an open loggia (the bases of column supports to
her right and left are all that is left of the colonnade). Her upper
body is turned slightly inwards, presenting to the spectator an
almost full-face view. Leonardo had demanded that the portrait show
the "movement of the spirit", a demand he himself fulfilled with
this painting. According to Leonardo, the portrait should not
restrict itself to the imitation of external reality, but should
contrive to translate mental activity into visual effect. At the
same time, his subject's famously restrained, practically invisible
smile, barely suggested by the shadow hovering at the corner of her
mouth - a smile which has inspired almost every possible
interpretation, from lust to chastity, from irony to tenderness -
represents the dialectical reversal of an already widespread
tendency to portray more agitated emotional conditions (see
Antonello da Messina's Smiling Man). From a theoretical
point of view, it is therefore closer to the technique of "dissimulatio"
advocated by Baldassare Castiglione, whereby true feelings were
obscured and the resultant ambiguity of the facial expression
precluded its interpretation. Emotional and bodily restraint are
demonstrated in the pose of Mona Lisa's hands, too. Her left arm
leans on the arm of her chair, while her right hand cautiously rests
on top of it. This gives the impression of a compact unity, a state
at once relaxed and concentrated.
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Bartolommeo da Veneto
Young Woman (Lucrezia Borgia?)
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In his treatise on painting, Leonardo stated that portraits
greatly profited from having their subjects sit in dim light."
According to this view, the lighting here is particularly
advantageous: the greenish-brown mountainous landscape with its
rocky crags in the backgound is shrouded in dusky shadow. The
contours blur to the horizon - an example of Leonardo's famous "sfumato".
Metaphors from the natural world had been used to characterise
psychological states since the high Middle Ages, especially since
Petrarch; here, too, the landscape characterises the woman's
emotional state. The symbolic content, a composite ideal landscape,
is conventional. Thus the winding path (or river?) on the left must
be seen as an allusion to the story of Hercules' choice (told by
Xenophon, Memorabilia 2, l-22ff., and constantly referred to in
Renaissance art), in which a narrow path winding through a barren,
rocky landscape is described as the path of virtue. An allegory of
virtue would hardly seem to support the idea that the lady was a
mistress. Together with the veil-motif, the path symbolism appears
rather to bear out the contention that the woman is a "donna", a
married woman.
Martin Kemp has shown that Leonardo intended the landscape
background to illustrate events in natural history: the origin of
certain geological formations. It is well-known that Leonardo
undertook various studies of Tuscan geographical features in
connection with plans to construct a system of canals along the Arno.
In so doing, he arrived at a similar conclusion to Giovanni Villani
(c. 1276-1348), who, in his "Florentine Chronicles" (Cromche
fi-orentine), asserted that the Arno had once been dammed up by an
enormous "barrier of rock", behind which had been two lakes.
According to Kemp, these two lakes appear in the landscape behind
the "Mona Lisa" as "primeval progenitors of the Arno valley". What
is more, the natural events alluded to in the background are echoed
in details of the woman's face and clothes. Kemp goes on to provide
evidence that an analogy of this kind was actually intended by
Leonardo, quoting various remarks made by the artist, for example
his comparison of the fall of hair with running water. Whatever may
be said in defence of Kemp's theses, and there is much to recommend
them, it must nonetheless be pointed out that this landscape can
hardly be described as "untouched", pure Nature, predating Man's
intervention. The stone bridge with its many arches at the right of
the painting betrays the presence of a civilizing agent. Perhaps
Leonardo was pointing here to the particular importance of the work
of architects and engineers, of which he himself was one. Leonardo
would certainly have been familiar with the paramount significance
attached to bridge-building in ancient Rome (described by Varro and
Plutarch); this was carried out under the supervision of one of the
highest authorities in the Republic, namely the Pontifex Maximus.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa
(detail) |
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa
(detail)
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa
(detail) |
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Leonardo da Vinci
Hand Study
1490
Her famous smile has inspired almost every possible interpretation, and
yet it may not express a particular emotion at all. Perhaps it denotes
an attempt to disguise feelings that would otherwise seem too obvious by
presenting a balance between different emotional extremes. If so, it is
a sign of emotional and physical restraint, like her hands, whose pose
suggests a state at once relaxed and concentrated.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Mona Lisa
(detail) |
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