Okay, I am back. I had a little break to experience things fully and settle in to my new place. Also, all that talk about how Paris in the rain is soooo romantic, well it is, but nobody talks about the next day and how you get a nasty cold from wet feet and damp cold. Yuck! So I've been recovering. Okay so I last left you walking to the National Gallery Museum of Art. The sun came out and the birds were chirping. I stopped to take the obligatory selfie at the National Mall of the Capitol Building and came to the front steps of the National Gallery. What an impressive building! After dropping off my jacket and small backpack to the coat check and getting lost a couple of times I found myself in front of room 6 with an uninterrupted view of Leonardo's first portrait painting Ginevra De' Benci.
She is a show stopper. Her porcelain like skin, highlighted even more from the dark spiny juniper bush behind her and her direct gaze which says "I am what I am, you have no power over me" drew me in.
Now you're probably saying, "What's the big deal? She looks like a pissed off young woman who needs to get out in the sun more." Well, in the 1470's in Florence Italy, this painting was a big deal for quite a few reasons. First off, up until then, paintings of women were only in the side profile. Men could not be tempted by the gaze of a taken woman. The portrait of Ginevra was positioned in a 3/4 view with her gazing both directly at and somewhat beyond the viewer, very scandalous at the time. Also, women were only painted for a few reasons, when they were engaged, when they got married, or the birth of their first child. There is quite a bit of evidence that not only was this portrait not commissioned for any of those reasons, but also that it was commissioned from a man who was not her husband. Although this has been debated, I like this story so much better. So why would Leonardo choose this woman to break the societal norms?
Let us first take a look at Leonardo at the time he painted her. He was in his early twenties. He had at least helped paint The Baptism of Christ and mostly painted The Annunciation. His master, Andrea Del Verrocchio, said after seeing his angel in The Baptism of Christ said that he (Verrocchio) would not paint again because he can't compete. So we know he was already good. He was openly gay. In 1476, he was charged with sodomy, but the case was dismissed. Let's not forget that he was illegitimate, and to top it off he was a vegetarian and left handed. He wasn't exactly your run of the mill type of guy. He wanted to prove himself. In this first secular commissioned painting he not only wanted to nail it, but make it something people talked about, and that they did.
Now let's take a look at Ginevra. Born in 1457, she was the daughter of a wealthy Florentine banking family. Ginevra's grandfather Giovanni de' Benci was a partner with Cosimo de' Medici who established the Medici family as effective rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. When Giovanni died he was the second richest man in Florence, Cosimo being the first. He was a patron of the humanities and arts and financed the construction of a new, large convent called Le Murate which help to quell allegations of usury due to his banking endeavors. His son Amerigo de' Benci continued in his father's footsteps and even added a private cell at Le Murate for the Benci woman. Think of Le Murate as more of an elite boarding school for patrician girls and where Ginevra was educated in poetry, science, mathematics along with embroidery and art. Later she would be well known as a poet in her time. Unfortunately, the only surviving lines from her poetry are Vi chiedo perdono: io sono una tigre di motagna or I beg for mercy and I am a mountain tiger. At a time when women were not celebrated for their intellect, but only for their beauty and monetary value, this woman was celebrated for all three. Ginevra was a rich, educated beautiful young lady. When she was 16 she married Luigi de Bernardo Niccolini, a 32 year old widow in the wool weaving business on January 15th, 1474. This is when many scholars believe Leonardo painted her, which as I said was custom for the time. Leonardo's father Ser Piero da Vinci was notary to Amerigo, and it is known that Ginevra's older brother Giovanni was a good friend of Leonardo's. When Leonardo moved to Milan in his 30's he left paintings, books, world maps and precious stones with Giovanni, so we know if Ginevra was to get her portrait painted Leonardo was connected to the family, and it makes sense that they would choose him as her painter for her wedding portrait. All clean and tidy, but then there is this other story.
In November of 1474, Lorenzo De' Medici made a triple alliance with Milan, Venice and Florence to fortify against Pope Sixtus IV and his rising papal army. Bernardo Bembo was the Venetian ambassador for Florence, arrived in Florence in December of 1474 and settled into the courts doing what he did best, which was to schmooze. At the time there was this very cool thing happening in Florence called The Platonic Academy. It was started in 1438 by Cosimo de' Medici and continued until the death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492. The goal of the group was to translate all of Plato's works into Latin and have dinner parties where they discussed the ideas of Plato. One of those ideas was Platonic Love. It is the idea that to be closer to wisdom and true beauty one must be separate from carnal attraction to the body and move toward attractions of the souls and eventually union with the true self, so basically love without sex. Their mascot was the humanist poet Francesco Petrarch and his beloved Laura, the married woman he stalked and wrote about excessively in early 1300's. Many of the members of the group had their own Laura. For Lorenzo de' Medici it was Lucrezia Donati; for his younger brother Giuliano de' Medici it was Simonetta Vespucci. So when the 41 year old married Bernardo Bembo met the beautiful, intelligent, and now married Ginevra he found his Laura. But this Laura was his equal. She had voice and intellect; she could talk back. He paid court to her, declared himself in love and made it absolutely clear that his intentions were honorable and he was not looking for a mistress and neither his nor Ginevra's marriage was in danger. Because of his connection to the powerful Medici he was allowed to continue his interests and was even celebrated for his passions. There are at least ten poems written about their love, a couple of them written by Lorenzo de' Medici. Here is one written by Cristof Landino,
"He saw her and the flame penetrated his inner most being and a fearful
trembling ran through his hard bones. Ginevra felt happy because dear
Bembo you are young in years. There is power in your good looking body
and you skillfully combine jesting with dignity."
In 2016 a letter was found in the state archives in Florence between Bembo and Ginevra written sometime between 1479-1480. It beautifully portrays their love.
"My juniper who is said to be more beautiful than Helen. The evergreen plant
has a scent but it also has natural defenses. The woman combines hardness with
kindness. I wish for the later from my queen. I do not ask for anything
dishonorable, a modest glance or small exchange of words would be enough
to give me hope such a favor would be balm for my weak soul since without you
any joy would be a great war for me and more urgently the comfort from you does
not come soon you will find me dead and I will be free from pain." She responded
with, "I know very well that it is true that you honor me. Your verses give me great
pleasure because our love is chaste and dignified. You are in Jupiter's favor and know
how to preserve a woman's dignity. It pleases me when you call my name so often
because it is reason that allows me to love you. What, my lord, is the use of so much
lamenting. Your great misery affords me no joy. If you are in pain then I am in torment.
This will not end without effort. The love in my breast will never die but the tears
and the pain are of little value. Let us think of the common good."
This doesn't sound to me like just a casual thing. These two were in love. So these are the reasons I believe Bembo commissioned her painting verses it being a wedding or engagement portrait.
1) She looks older than 16. If the painting was commissioned after Bembo and Ginevra had known each other a while, closer to 1447-80, she would have been 21-23, which seems more appropriate. When she was engaged she was 15, married at 16. She had no children, so it couldn't be for that. There is more to those eyes.
2) Her dress is not fancy. If this was a wedding or engagement photo she would have been lavished in jewels and fancy fabrics often with the husband's coat of arms painted into the fabric, but she is wearing a simple brown gamura or woolen dress laced across the breast with a simple blue ribbon similar to ones worn in the home when no one would see them. Her neckline is covered by a translucent shift showing the narrow gold dress trim of the dress below fastened with a small gold pin. The black scarf could have been a symbol of her commitment to Le Murate convent. Often tertiary nuns, who could come and go would wear shorter black scarfs. Her unhappiness after Bembo left in 1480, never to returned was documented in many poems. She may have turned to the convent for comfort.
3) Probably the biggest tie to Bembo is the back of the painting. Often portrait paintings would only be shown on special occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries and the painting would either have a curtain or be turned around and another painting would be on the reverse. The painting of Ginevra has a painting on the reverse. It consists of a laurel sprig on the left, a palm branch of the right with a sprig of juniper in the middle with the words Virtutem forma Decorat which means beauty adorns virtue. The laurel representing her love for poetry, the palm her piety, the juniper her name and the motto showing how much she valued her virtue, but what wasn't known until infrared photography was used on the painting was that the juniper sprig and the motto beauty adorns virtue was painted later in tempura. The motto done in oil, which the rest of the painting on both sides are, is Virtus et Honor or Virtue and Honor which is Bernardo Bembo's motto. If her husband commissioned this painting why would he be okay to put another man's motto on the reverse?
4) No one really knows where the painting lived until it showed up in Liechtenstein in 1780, but was not cataloged as by Leonardo Da Vinci, but Lucas Cranach. There are documents about people seeing the painting, but unfortunately no one mentioned where they were when they saw it. If Bembo commissioned it and brought it back to Venice with him it makes sense, first that he would have his motto painted on the back, so his wife wouldn't have to look at the woman he loved and that after his death no one would know it was painted by Leonardo, since he wasn't as well known in Venice. It just makes you wonder where the painting was for all those years and who painted the juniper sprig and her motto.
5) One last interesting thing to look at regarding Ginevra de' Benci and Bernardo Bembo was a painting that may be a portrait of Bernardo Bembo. Some scholars believe that Hans Memling's Portrait of a Man with a Roman Coin is of Bernardo Bembo. Hans Memling was German painter who painted in Flemish style. It was painted sometime between 1474-1480, same timeframe as the portrait of Ginevra. They both have the 3/4 view, natural landscape and when you view the two portraits together the similarities are striking, especially for the time. We do know Leonardo studied Flemish painting. Did one painter paint it first and then the other asked to do one similar to the portrait of their love? Interesting.
So anyway, as you can probably tell, this is one of my favorite Leonardo Da Vinci paintings. It just makes you want to be curious about who she was, who she loved, why she looks so sad. You just know she has a story and it is an interesting one. This portrait is known as the first psychological portrait ever painted. She is not portrayed as others want her to be, but as she is, strong, intelligent and pious with the melancholy of a thinker. Leonardo was able to show her seeking a balance with the outside world and her inner world in order not to lose herself in either, because, as he said in his advice for painting, physical and mental energy must match each other. John Walker, the second director of the National Gallery of Art from 1956-69 said of this painting, " Luigi, Carlo and Giovanni, Tita and Lucrezia all have vanished.Their names survive and a few records of their activities, but their personalities are gone. Only Ginevra remains. She lives almost as vividly for us as she once lived for her Bernardo Bembo and Luigi Niccolini. Leonardo Da Vinci has given her immortality." How amazing is that.
Fiorani, Francesca. SHADOW DRAWING : How Science Taught Leonardo How to Paint. S.L., Picador, 2021.
Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo Da Vinci. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.
Vahland, Kia, and Da Vinci Leonardo. The Da Vinci Women : The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo’s Art. New York, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, An Imprint Of Perseus Books, A Subsidiary Of Hachette Book Group, Inc, 2020.
Vojnovic, Paola. “Portrait of Ginevra De’ Benci by Leonardo Da Vinci.” Www.youtube.com, 20 May 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=msothTTq7qw. Accessed 21 Jan. 2022.
Comments