Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci: Beauty. Politics, Literature and Art in Early Renaissance Florence
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! ! ! ! ! ! ! SIMONETTA CATTANEO VESPUCCI: BEAUTY, POLITICS, LITERATURE AND ART IN EARLY RENAISSANCE FLORENCE ! by ! JUDITH RACHEL ALLAN ! ! ! ! ! ! ! A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Department of Modern Languages School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2014 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT ! My thesis offers the first full exploration of the literature and art associated with the Genoese noblewoman Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci (1453-1476). Simonetta has gone down in legend as a model of Sandro Botticelli, and most scholarly discussions of her significance are principally concerned with either proving or disproving this theory. My point of departure, rather, is the series of vernacular poems that were written about Simonetta just before and shortly after her early death. I use them to tell a new story, that of the transformation of the historical monna Simonetta into a cultural icon, a literary and visual construct who served the political, aesthetic and pecuniary agendas of her poets and artists. It is an account of the Florentine circles that used women to forge a collective sense of identity, of the emergence of Simonetta and her equally idealised peers as touchstones in contemporary debates regarding beauty and love, and of their corresponding lack of importance as ‘real’ women in the conservative republic in which they lived. In doing this, my thesis makes an important contribution to our understanding of how and why female beauty was commodified in the poetry and art of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence. ! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS! ! I am indebted to a great number of people, all of whom have had an impact on my thesis and !have made my five years of research an extremely valuable experience. My primary thanks must go to my supervisor, Dr Ita Mac Carthy. Whilst never being less than academically rigorous, she has been unfailingly kind, encouraging and supportive, providing inspiration and reassurance in equal measure. Generous with her time, constructive in her criticism, and remarkably tolerant of unreasonable requests and multiple emails, it has been a !pleasure to be supervised by her. I am similarly grateful to my co-supervisor, David Hemsoll, who has been instrumental in shaping my approach to the paintings and sculptures that are analysed in this thesis. I have happy memories of discussions that changed the course of my research and gave me a confidence that I once thought impossible. Welcoming from the first, David has always made me feel that I have something important to contribute, and I have greatly enjoyed sharing !information and methodologies. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research, and to express my gratitude to the University of Birmingham, the Royal Historical Society and the AHRC for the grants that allowed me to spend two months in !the libraries and archives of Italy, and to attend conferences in the UK and the United States. Prof. Judith Bryce and Prof. Simon Gilson deserve a special mention, too, not only for the letters of reference that they have kindly written on my behalf but for their continued interest !in and support for my research, which means a great deal to me. I have relied on the generosity of other scholars in ways too numerous to list here. I would, however, like to extend my particular thanks to the following: Fabio Barricalla, Jane Bridgeman, Duncan Bull, Jill Burke, Rebekah Compton, Virginia Cox, Alessandra Curti, Maria DePrano, Lynn Dicks, Arjan van Dixhoorn, Jane Everson, Geetha Ganapathy-Doré, Dave Goulson, Julia L. Hairston, Cath King, Victoria Kirkham, Katell Laveant, Alison Luchs, the late Eugenio Marino, Samuel Mareel, Nicholas Martin, Brian Maxson, Federica Pich, Jennifer Ramkalawon, Irina Rasmussen Goloubeva, Francis L. W. Ratnieks, Brian Richardson, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, Lisa Sampson, Monika Schmitter, Paul Taylor, !Matthew Treherne, Jane Tylus and Gur Zak. I am also grateful for the assistance that I have been offered by librarians and archivists in the UK and Italy. I owe a particular debt to Emilio Panella of the monastery of Santa Maria Novella, who was most generous with his time and expertise, and to the staff of the Biblioteca Riccardiana, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze and the Biblioteca dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana. I have spent much of the last two years in the Barber Fine Art Library, and would like to thank the staff for their friendliness, helpfulness and !forbearance in fielding odd requests. I have been similarly lucky in my dealings with curators, many of whom have been very accommodating in helping me to obtain reproductions of the artworks discussed in this thesis. I would to extend my especial thanks to Bastian Eclercy (Städel Museum, Frankfurt), Nicole Garnier (Musée Condé, Chantilly), Alessandro Martoni (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice), Anna Jolly (Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg) and Amy Taylor (Ashmolean, Oxford), along with !the other museums and galleries that made their images available for free. In the near-decade that I have spent at the University of Birmingham it has been a pleasure to be taught by and to work with members of the Italian Studies department past and present; thank you for your patience and encouragement, and for making me feel welcome from the !very beginning. To the many friends that I have made in the postgraduate community at Birmingham and beyond: you are a large part of the reason why being a postgraduate has been such a fantastic experience. Again, there is not the space to describe all of the ways in which you have helped and supported me and generally made my life better but, in strictly alphabetical order, many thanks to: Carla Aloè, Stephanie Appleton, Klazina Botke, Helen Coy, Paule Desmoulière, Jamie Edwards, James Green, Cory Hazlehurst, Helen Hunter, Nicky Jolly, Lisa Kranzer, Luca Malici, Irene Mariani, Elizabeth Moore, Claire Peters, Emily Rozier, Mike Rush, !Federica Signoriello, Beth Spacey, Alex Standen, Sandra Toffolo and Clare Watters. I do not have the words to thank my family, who have all been simply amazing. My parents have been infinitely supportive throughout my twenty-three years of education, including nine years at university, uncomplainingly putting up with my anxieties, stresses and increasingly unreasonable proof-reading requests. They introduced me to literature, art and Italy at an early age, without which I would never have got this far, and their love and enthusiasm means the world to me. Finally, to my husband Robin, whom I married in the course of writing and !researching this thesis: your unwavering love and belief in me make my day, every day. Grazie mille a tutti quanti. TABLE OF CONTENTS! ! !Chapter One !Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci: An Introduction 1 ! Chapter Two !From Genoese Wife to Florentine Ideal: The Iconisation of Simonetta ! Introduction 40 ! Poliziano, Simonetta and Florentine Poetics in the Laurentian Era 41 ! i) Civic Icon and Muse 41 ! ii) Dama and Nymph 58 ! Post-Mortem Poetics 64 ! The Iconisation of Women in Late-Fifteenth Century Florence 70 ! Poliziano: A Case Study 87 ! Conclusion 93 ! Chapter Three Politics, Patronage, Competition, Collaboration: Simonetta’s Election as Poetic Muse ! ! Introduction 94 ! Depictions of Simonetta and Cultural Trends in 1470s Florence 95 ! Cultural Capital and the Search for a Patron 102 ! The Relationship Between the ‘Simonetta poets’ 119 ! Conclusion 126 ! Coda: Tommaso Sardi and the Pleasures and Pitfalls of Patronage 127 ! ! Chapter Four From Laurentian Star to Savonarolan Serpent: The Impact of Political, Religious and Cultural Change on Representations of Simonetta ! Introduction 136 1475-1477: The Emergence of Simonetta 137 The (Poetic) Aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy 147 1494-1515: Savonarola, the Reinvented Republic, and the Return of the Medici 158 Conclusion 166 Coda: Girolamo Benivieni and the Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Simonetta 167 ! Chapter Five Simonetta, Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo: The Commodification of Beauty in Early Renaissance Florence ! Introduction 180 Poliziano, Botticelli and Imitation 184 Botticelli’s ‘Ideal Heads’ 202 Piero di Cosimo’s Simonetta 215 Conclusion 226 ! Conclusion 228 ! Appendix One: The ‘Simonetta Poems’ 243 ! a) Girolamo Benivieni 243 b) Lorenzo de’ Medici 246 c) Angelo Poliziano 253 d) Bernardo Pulci 259 e) Luigi Pulci 265 f) Tommaso Sardi 265 g) Francesco Nursio Timideo 272 h) Baccio Ugolini 275 ! Appendix Two: Illustrations 276 ! Bibliography 316 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS! (Appendix! Two) ! Fig. 1: Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’ Benci (obverse), circa 1474-1478, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, !Washington, p. 276. Fig. 2: Attributed to Niccolò Fiorentino, Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, circa 1486, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, Luciano !2001a: 130, p. 277. Fig. 3: Niccolò Fiorentino, Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni (reverse: Venus as Diana), circa 1486, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Samuel H. Kress !Collection, Randolph 2002: 212, p. 277. Fig. 4: Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Birth of St. John the Baptist, circa 1486-1490, !Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Bridgeman, p. 278. Fig. 5: Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Birth of St. John the Baptist (detail), circa !1486-1490, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Bridgeman, p. 278.