Category Archives: Uffizi Gallery

A match in Liverpool

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This weekend I spent time researching more on Fra Lippi’s Seven Saints, a source used by Leonardo da Vinci for his Annunciation painting, and came across this work by the English artist Henry Holiday (1839-1927) titled Dante and Beatrice. It’s housed at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 

Dante and Beatrice, by Henry Holiday, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

“The painting is based on Dante Alighieri’s 1294 autobiographical work La Vita Nuova which describes his love for Beatrice Portinari. Dante concealed his love by pretending to be attracted to other women. The painting depicts an incident when Beatrice, having heard gossip relating to this, refuses to speak to him. The event is shown as Beatrice (in a white dress) and two other women walk past Dante standing on the Santa Trinita Bridge in Florence. […] Holiday was anxious that the painting should be historically accurate and in 1881 travelled to Florence to carry out research. […] When Holiday died in 1927, he was described as ‘the last Pre-Raphaelite’. Many of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s paintings, including Dante’s Dream, had as their subject the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, and this interest is the likely inspiration for Holiday’s painting.” (Wikipedia)

However, another inspiration was the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It is said that after Botticelli died in 1510, interest in the artist and his work waned and was virtually forgotten until renewed by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1848.

While on his research visit to Florence, Holiday may have had the opportunity to seek out and closely study Botticelli’s paintings housed in the Uffizi Museum. So it should come as no surprise that Botticelli’s influence can be recognised in Holiday’s Dante and Beatrice – none more so than elements of Botticelli’s Primavera, the left half showing the Three Graces and the mythological figure generally identified as Mars. It is Mars who has turned away from the Three Graces, while in Holiday’s painting it is Dante who is ignored by the three women.

Primavera, by Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Compare the detail below of two of the women from both paintings. See how Holiday has matched the tilted head of the woman on the left. Another match is the woman’s hand resting on the shoulder. Then there is the rose paired with the brooch on the woman’s chest.

Matching pairs (above and below) from Primavera and Dante and Beatrice

But the clincher is the barrel placed at the left edge of Holiday’s painting. It’s a shout-out to Botticelli, a nickname given to the artist which means “little barrel”. Holiday adds a final touch by identifying some of the produce in the barrel, spring greens (perhaps lettuces) alongside lemons, and so pointing to the title of Botticelli’s painting, Primavera, translated from Italian as “Spring”. Instead of the oranges depicted in Primavera, Holiday has shown lemons.

Detail of the barrel in Holiday’s Dante and Beatrice painting.

There are other elements of Holiday’s painting which suggest he may also have  known of the connection between Botticelli’s Primavera and Fra Filippo Lippi’s Seven Saints.

I shall present details on this in a future post.

Close encounter

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

My last post of 2022 compared two images of Fioretta Gorini, although one of the portraits is mistakingly identified as Ginevra de Benci by the National Gallery in London where the painting is housed. No matter. 

Two versions of Fioretta Gorini… (left) as painted by Leonardo da Vinci; (right) as painted by Giorgio Vasari and modelled on Leonardo’s version.

The source of this latest discovery is a painting displayed in the room dedicated to Pope Clement VII in the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence. Clement was the name taken by Guilio de’ Medici when he was elected Pope in November 1523. He is said to be the son of Giuliano de’ Medici and his mistress Fioretta Gorini who gave birth a month after Giuliano was assassinated on April 26, 1474.

The painting is attributed to Giorgio Vasari but likely assisted by Giovanni Stradano. It depicts the marriage of Henry, the second son of the French king Francis I, and Catherine, the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino. The wedding took place at Marseille on October 28, 1533, when the couple were just 14 years old. Pope Clement VII, the central figure in the painting, conducted the marriage ceremony.

The Palazzo Vecchio is known for the many paintings in the building produced by Vasari and his assistants and for his expansion of the room known as the Hall of the Five Hundred.

Just a minute walk from the Palazzo Vecchio is the famous Uffizi Gallery, originally designed by Giorgio Vasari as offices and constructed over two decades between 1560 and 1580. The two buildings are connected by a walkway known as the Vasari Corridor.

The Vasari Corridor between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery

Although the Uffizi houses several paintings by Giorgio Vasari, there is one famous painting in the Gallery that connects him in a way that has never come to light in modern times. For all that has been researched and known over the centuries about Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera painting, I don’t know of any study that has revealed its connection to Vasari’s painting of Pope Clement VII marrying Henry II and Catherine de Medici. Botticelli’s Primavera is a primary source of inspiration for the Vasari composition.

Primavera by Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Vasari mentioned the Primavera painting in his two-volume work of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects:

“For various houses throughout the city he [Botticelli] painted round pictures, and many female nudes, of which there are still two at Castello, a villa of Duke Cosimo’s; one representing the birth of Venus, with those Winds and Zephyrs that bring her to the earth, with the Cupids; and likewise another Venus, whom the Graces are covering with flowers as a symbol of spring; and all this he is seen to have expressed very gracefully.”

Vasari’s brief description gives no indication of any disguised narratives in the Primavera painting, so who was the source that later provided him or Stradano with an explanation to enable them to recycle various elements of the painting and present a new version of Springtime? Could it have been Michelangelo who was 35 years old when Botticelli died in 1510. Vasari was born a year later and Stradano first saw the light of day in Flanders in 1523.

I’m trying to source a high resolution of the Vasari painting to access more detail. The online versions are small, low resolution images and most of the detail is unclear. 

More on this in a future post.