Monthly Archives: July 2023

Another monkey and bird motif

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This figure from Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles is said to symbolise Repentance. It is also portrayed as a magpie, a sign of approaching death (one for sorrow, two for joy).

The dying man is Domenico Ghirlandaio, seen dragged by his hair by the woman in blue, a personification of Calumny or Slander.

Here Botticelli confirms in yet another of his paintings the rupture in the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci and Ghirlandaio who died in January 1494 of ‘pestilence fever’.

In a previous post I pointed out that the sentinel figure of Mars keeping watch above the ‘victim’ represents Leonardo. It refers to another painting Botticelli had produced earlier, titled Venus and Mars. That particular painting shows Mars asleep, stripped of his armour, and being tormented by three young satyrs, while Venus remains dressed, awake and alert, and keeping watch.

A similar theme of torment can be seen above the sentinel panel of Mars. It shows three putti torturing a lion in various ways: using a whip, riding on its back, and forcing liquid down its throat. The lion represents Leonardo.

Another motif associated with Leonardo is the monkey and bird. It’s not the first time Botticelli has borrowed this motif from Leonardo’s painting of The Annunciation. In this instance, the bird is the figure of Repentance – the Magpie – as profiled in the image below along with the profile of the monkey or ape’s head.

Notice also how the the beak of the magpie points to another panel, that of four men. The seated man is Leonardo. The others are those who were named with him in the anonymous letter accusing the group of “immoral activities”.

This scene is similar to the one Botticelli painted in the Uffizi version of the Adoration of the Magi. The horse head on the adjacent panel, beneath the beak in the Apelles painting, is also a pointer to the scene portrayed in the Magi painting. As to the three men conversing with Leonardo, could they refer to the biblical three wise men from the East and/or the authors of books studied by Leonardo, including the Arab engineer Ismail al-Jazari and his inventions Leonardo referenced in his painting of The Annunciation?

The conversation continues

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This beautiful painting known as the The Cestello Annunciation, with its original frame, was commissioned to Sandro Botticelli in 1489 by Benedetto di Sir Francesco Guardi del Cane, for his chapel in the Carmelite church and convent located in Borgo Pinti, Florence. The convent was originally dedicated to St Mary Magdalen delle Convertite, “patron of once-fallen, now-converted women”.

The painting was restored in 1978 and is now housed at the Uffizi in Florence. 

Although commissioned some 12 years after Leonardo da Vinci completed his painting of The Annunciation, Botticelli’s Cestello version makes several references to Leonardo’s earlier interpretation, most notably the monkey-and-bird feature.

So why did Botticelli take this approach? Could there be a more personal narrative between the two painters expressed in the Cestello Annunciation?

Below is the monkey and bird motif featured in Leonardo’s Annunciation.

Botticelli’s monkey and bird are also grouped, except that the bird is a stork and not a falcon as in Leonardo’s version.

More on the Calumny of Apelles

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The Calumny of Apelles, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence

Of the several dozen figures portrayed in Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles, one in particular is a key to recognising an ongoing narrative found in some of Botticelli’s early paintings. 

The figure is squeezed between those representing Perfidy and Calumny and faces the head of the ‘victim’ Domenico Ghirlandaio. Its arms reach upwards, and in its hands is a tambourine.

The tambourine represents the tambouri (drums), the Florentine post boxes known as “holes of truth” which were designed for the purpose of reporting misdemeanours and crimes. In April 1476 an unsigned letter was posted in one of the tambouri accusing Leonard da Vinci and other men of sodomy. According to clues outlined in paintings by Leonardo and Botticelli, the report was by the hand of Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Placed in a niche above the head of Perfidy is a statue of an armoured sentinel. In his right hand is a sword, and his left hand grips a shield. His legs are set wide apart and between them is the outline of the sentinel’s cloak and shield. However this blade-like shape is also meant to represent a writing quill. Its size is greater than the sword and so is suggestive of the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword. But Botticelli implies a biblical truth to this phrase, the passage from Paul’s letter to the Hebrews: 

The word of God is something alive and active. It cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely; it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from him; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to who we must give account of ourselves. (5:12-13).

The sentinel, who keeps watch, is portrayed as Leonardo da Vinci, famous for his dissection of cadavers and detailed anatomical drawings of his findings. Ghirlandaio portrayed Leonardo in this role in one of his frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in the basilica of Santa Trinita. The central figure in The Death of St Francis, dressed in red and blue, is Leonardo.

Detail from The Death of St Francis, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sassetti Chapel, Florence

So as Ghirlandaio portrayed Leonardo keeping watch over the dying St Francis, Botticelli has also portrayed him keeping watch over the dying Ghirlandaio, perhaps even suggesting how the latter may have kept watch over Leonardo and the other men he accused of misdemeanours.

In his biography of Leonardo da Vinci, The Flights of Mind, Charles Nicholl explains that a copy of the document denouncing Leonardo “survives among the archives of the Ufficiali di Notti – the Officers of the Night and Conservers of the Morality of Monasteries, who were essentially the Florentine night-watch, though they could as well be described as the vice-squad.”

This title may well explain why Ghirlandaio decided to place Leonardo among the group of monks attending the death of St Francis.

A Trinitarian theme

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This trio of heads all feature in Sandro Botticelli’s painting, the Calumny of Apelles. Left to right, they represent:  the Victim, Rancour (Envy), and King Midas.

A comprehensive description and history of the painting is published by Wikipedia. However, what Wikipedia doesn’t reveal, or any other source that I know of, is the identity of the three men, apart from their allegorical representation in the narrative depicting the Calumny of Apelles.

The Calumny of Apelles, Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi

The painting is approximately 3ft x 2ft in size and dated c1495.

As for the identity of the three men, there is only one: Domenico Ghirlandaio. The painter died in January 1494, aged just 45, of ‘pestilence fever”.

More on this at another time, but just to add, the painting provides another connection with Leonardo da VInci’s version of The Annunciation.

The Annunciation and the Peacock clock

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I recently explained how Leonardo da Vinci had been inspired by the Muslim polymath Ismail al-Jazari and referenced one of the inventor’s clock designs – the Candle Clock – in his painting of The Annunciation. He also referenced another of al-Jazari’s constructions – the Peacock Clock.

The simple illustration above shows a peahen with neck outstretched. Below the peahen are two facing peachicks and below these is a peacock with its tail fanned..

For a full description of the mechanics and how the clock operates, go to this link.

Leonardo applied the bird features in this way: The Virgin Mary represents the peahen and acts as the water source. Her extended right arm represents the extended neck of the peahen.

Detail of the sarcophagus from The Annunciation, by Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi, Florence

During the process, the pair of peachicks begin to quarrel and turn their backs on each other. This is represented by the two scrolling bird-shaped edges of the sarcophagus. They also represent Domenico Ghirlandaio (left) and Leonardo da Vinci (right). 

The wreath or garland linking the two scrolling features is another reference to Ghirlandaio (garland maker). The garland is shaped as a mouth and represents what is known as “The Mouth of Truth”. This can be understood in several ways which I will explain in a future post.

Above the garland is a fluted shell intended not only to represent the fanned tail of the peacock, but also a scallop shell – a pilgrim’s emblem. 

Ghirlandaio was in Rome in 1475, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the newly-built Vatican library. The year had been declared a Holy or JubileeYear by the Pope, whereby people were encouraged to make a religious pilgrimage to Rome during that time.

The Pasquino in Rome

There are indications in The Annunciation painting that Leonardo visited Rome in 1475, likely with Ghirlandaio and other artists engaged in producing works of art to mark the Jubilee. One notable reference to Rome is the Pasquino, a dismembered sculpture of two men unearthed during the 15th century and considered one of the first ‘talking statues’ in the city. This also connects to Domenico di Pasquino, one of four men, along with Leonardo, brought before a Florentine court of justice in 1476, on a charge of sodomy.

Four years ago, I posted a note suggesting Domenico Ghirlandaio was the person who anonymously ‘outed’ Leonardo da Vinci. Around this time, and even to the present day, there was “the tradition of attaching anonymous criticisms to the base of the Paquino figure.  The satirical literary form pasquinade (or “pasquil”) takes its name from this tradition.” (Wikipedia)

And here we can see how Leonardo responded to Ghirlandaio’s accusation by pairing the name of one of the other accused men – Domenico di Pasquino – with the name of the statue and Ghirlandaio’s first name, Domenico.

The Virgin’s extended arm also serves another purpose, not only to compliment the extended wing section of the Angel Gabriel, but also to reveal the identities of the other men charged with Leonardo.

The objects above the ‘sarcophagus’ or altar – the fluted column, the veil, the holy book, and the Virgin’s hand – are all related to the mechanics of the peacock clock, which I will explain at another time., except to say at this point that when the cycle is completed every half-hour, the sound of peacocks is heard. And here Leonardo returns to the monkey feature pointed out in an previous post. It is said that the sound of a peacock’s call is similar to a monkey. Some species of owls can also sound like a monkey and this explains the wide-eyed owl feature Leonardo incorporated on the side of the sarcophagus.

Finally, one other unusual feature seen on the sarcophagus is the right clawed foot, superimposed with a turbaned head, and perhaps Leonardo’s hat-tip to Ismail al-Jazari.

Leonardo and his face of an angel

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Detail from The Baptism of Christ, Andrea del Verroccho, Leonardo da Vinci, Uffizi

This detail of one of the angels featured in Andrea del Verrocchio’s Baptism of Christ is said to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, it represents Leonardo himself during the time he was apprenticed in Verrocchio’s workshop.

The image was one of the sources for Filippino Lippi’s portrayal of Leonardo as the drumming angel he frescoed in the Carafa Chapel in the church of Santa Maria supra Minerva, Rome.

Detail of the Drumming Angel, Filippino Lippi, Carafa Chapel

Lippi’s angel is contraposed. The head looks left and downwards. Leonardo’s version faces right and looks up.

Both angels are glorified with a halo and blessed with curling blond hair covering the back of their necks.

Note the black shape covering Leonardo’s right arm in his self portrait, and the similar shape that projects from the shoulder of Lippi’s version. As to what the shape represents, I’m uncertain about this, but hope to come up with an answer after further study.

Lippi also adapted the red and gold colours on Leonardo’s shoulder to form the shield feature on the left shoulder of the drumming angel to represent the Carafa coat of arms.

There are other parts of the drumming angel that connect to Leonardo, both to his painting of The Annunciation, and the disfigured Pasquino sculpture featured in my previous post.

The Assumption, Carafa Chapel, Filippino Lippi

Pasquino

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Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Following on from my last post, here’s another image that links to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Annunciation and also to Filippino Lippi’s drumming angel in the Carafa Chapel in Rome (below).

The print appears appears in a portfolio of engravings and etchings known as Speculum Roman Magnificentiae (The Mirror of Roman Magnificence). It is generally titled: Statue of Pasquin in the House of Cardinal Ursino.

The Pasquino is one of Rome’s five “talking statues”. It has an association with Cardinal Oliviero Carafa whose coat of arms is depicted across two facets of the plinth in the above print.

There are similar extant prints by other engravers and publishers, but this particular edition (c1550) is said to be “after” Nicolas Beatrizet, a 16th century French engraver who worked under the direction of Michelangelo. 

The Pasquino as it stands in Rome today.