Simonetta Vespucci between real and ideal

Venus from Venus and Mars has often been associated with Simonetta Vespucci (nee Cattaneo), considered one of the most beautiful women of Renaissance Florence. Originally from Genova, Simonetta married Marco Vespucci and moved to Florence where she was admired by poets and painters who tried to immortalize her beauty in poems and paintings. Over the years that of Simonetta became a myth and several attempts have been made to identify the real portrait of the real Simonetta. Fingers had been pointed towards the following: Verrocchio’s female bust (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC); Piero di Cosimo’s portrait of young lady (Musee Conde’, Chantilly) and many Botticelli’s female portraits. But can any of these works be taken as the real representation of Simonetta?

Recent scholarship have tackled this issue noticing how difficult is for us to confirm whether these images actually refer to a specific woman. As these portraits share striking similarities (figures’ hair, dresses and facial features), it is possible that they were meant to represent a particular lady that physically existed in fifteenth century Florence. In Venus and Mars the contemporaneity of the painting is suggested by those aspects of material culture that I have previously analised (brooch and cushion). Contemporary elements apart, these artworks also seem to trasform the (real) female figure into an ideal one based on Petrarch’s poetic stereotypes.

Botticelli’s ladies are characterized by long wavy blond hair, dressed with light, long white tunics that show their bare feet. These elements recall classical examples, associating Botticelli’s figures to nymphs and goddesses. The same “transformation” happens in poems by Petrarch, Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo il Magnifico where ladies are described with long blond hair, rose cheeks and red lips. They are also said to be chaste and graceful (gentil/leggiadra). Images of nymphs and mythological allusions often occur in poems, according to the themes of the Dolce Stil Novo and, perhaps, due to the Neoplatonic influences. Correspondences between poetic works and painted images clearly appear.

Botticelli’s female portraits therefore become part of the “problematic category of Renaissance paintings identified as portraits of unknown beautiful women” (Schmitter; Cropper). Both these portrait-like images from Botticelli's workshop and the poems written about Simonetta combine representations of 'real'/'ideal', 'portrait'/'nymph' creating complex, multi layered figures and meanings.

The desire of capturing/finding Simonetta’s beauty persists nowadays. The Italian artist Omar Ronda chose to depict and compare the myth of Simonetta Vespucci with that of Marilyn Monroe. A recent exhibition in Florence (2010) brought together a selection of Ronda’s Frozen Portraits representing Simonetta (or what we think is the portrait of Simonetta) and Marilyn: two different women, belonging to two different times who shared one feature, beauty.

Sources

• Lazzi, Giovanna e Ventrone, P. 2007. Simonetta Vespucci: la nascita della Venere fiorentina (Firenze, Polistampa)

• Lazzi, Giovanna e Santaniello, F. 2010. Omar Ronda: Metamorfosi di Primavera
(Milano, Skira)

• Cropper, Elizabeth. 1986. “The beauty of women: problems in the rhetoric of Renaissance portraiture”, Rewriting the renaissance: the discourse of sexual difference in early modern Europe (Chicago University Press)

• Schmitter, M. 1995. “Botticelli’s images of Simonetta Vespucci”, The Rutgers Art Review, 15: 33-57

• Interesting blog about Simonetta Vespucci (in French and Italian): http://simonetta-vespucci.blogspot.com/