Conference paper - National Galleries of Scotland 20th May 2011

Too bad! I have not been blogging for a while. Been busy with research, university deadlines and my second trip (lucky me) to Florence. My work has not slowed down though and I have plenty to write about! I will continue from where I left in March when I started my investigation on Botticelli’s Venus and Mars. By looking at aspects of material culture and bodily displayed I supported the idea of the panel being a marriage piece. Elements such as the white dress and the chest brooch Venus is wearing and the red cushion the goddess is leaning on could, in all probability, be linked to weddings as Renaissance verbal and visual sources seem to confirm. If that was the case there is to determine who was the couple the panel was meant to be for.

Which was the marriage Venus and Mars meant to celebrate? And for which Vespucci couple? These are the questions I have been recently trying to answer. Below a summary of the outcomes of the past two months of research that constituted the object of the paper I presented last week at the National Galleries of Scotland (Postgraduate Students Annual Conference – The University of Edinburgh)

Venus and Mars, historical figures?

Academics have attempted to identify the god and goddess in Venus and Mars with historical figures in fifteenth century Florence. Venus closely resembles other Botticelli female figures– such as those in the Primavera and Birth of Venus – that have been identified as portraits of Simonetta Vespucci, nee Cattaneo, the most beautiful women of the Renaissance (a great book on the life/myth of this lady is Farina Rachele, Simonetta: una donna alla corte dei Medici, 2001).  A connection between Venus and Simonetta followed. After Gombrich advanced the hypothesis that the panel could have been made to celebrate a marriage within the Vespucci family due to the presence of the wasps, another conclusion was quickly drawn. if Venus portrayed Simonetta, Mars must have represented her groom, Marco Vespucci. The occasion of the commission was therefore identified as the marriage of Simonetta and Marco celebrated in 1468. There are many aspects however that, when taken into consideration, make this hypothesis unsustainable.

First of all dates. The marriage between the Genoese Simonetta and Marco was arranged in 1468 by Piero Vespucci, Marco’s father, when he travelled to Piombino as the captain of a galleass in the service of Ferdinando of Aragona. The following year the wedding was celebrated in the church of S. Torpete in Genova before the couple made their way to Florence. Scholars agree in dating Botticelli Venus and Mars around 1483-85 for stylistic reasons and if the date proposed is correct the panel could have not been commissioned to celebrate a wedding that took place two decades earlier. Moreover the provenance of the panel is unknown and so far, due to a lack of material (or research into the material?) it has been difficult to ascertain whether it came from one of the Vespucci properties. If it did, in which of the Vespucci houses was it kept? This is a very difficult questions to answer as, first of all, there is to determine where Marco and Simonetta lived. Identifying their house might be a good starting point.

It has been advanced the hypothesis that Venus and Mars could have been part of the room painted by Botticelli in the Vespucci Palace (today Palazzo Incontri, via dei Servi - Florence). Venus and Mars however does not correspond to the description that Vasari gives of Botticelli’s room, decorated with numerous, lively small figures. The Story of Virginia and Story of Lucrezia, presenting scenes cramped with small scale characters, fit the description given well and have been identified with some of the panel constituting the decoration (I blogged about this on a previous post, 10^th December 2010). Venus and Mars not only does not fit Vasari’s description but also differs in style when compared to the other two panels.

All these problems made me re-approach the painting and wonder if, perhaps, it could have been made for another Vespucci couple. In the years 1483-85, when the Venus and Mars was painted, the wedding between Lorenzo il Magnifico’s cousin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici and Simonetta’s niece, Semiramide Appiani, was celebrated in Florence. What’s interesting to notice it that Venus and Mars bears striking stylistic similarities with other works of Botticelli such as Primavera, The Birth of Venus and Minerva and the Centaur. These paintings have not only been previously recognized as belonging to the same cultural milieu, but also associated with the Medici family, specifically with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, patron of Botticelli. Furthermore female figures in Primavera and Minerva and the Centaur have already been suggested to portray Semiramide Appiani. I wonder if Venus and Mars might yet be another piece of this intricate jigsaw.