A detailed visual analysis of Sandro Botticelli\u27s  Idealized Portrait of a Lady  that incorporates gender roles in Renaissance Florence and discusses Botticelli\u27s hidden messages and common themes within his works

Buoso, Alessia M.

English

Gettysburg College

CAFE Symposium 2023 Celebration of Academic First-Year Engagement 2-8-2023 Botticelli's Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a Lady Alessia M. Buoso Gettysburg College, buosal01@gettysburg.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cafe2023  Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Art and Design Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Buoso, Alessia M., "Botticelli's Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a Lady" (2023). CAFE Symposium 2023. 23. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cafe2023/23 This open access poster is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact cupola@gettysburg.edu. Botticelli's Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a Lady Abstract A detailed visual analysis of Sandro Botticelli's "Idealized Portrait of a Lady" that incorporates gender roles in Renaissance Florence and discusses Botticelli's hidden messages and common themes within his works. Keywords Sandro Botticelli, Women in Renaissance, Renaissance Florence Disciplines Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture | Art and Design | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Comments This poster was created based on work completed for FYS 197: Florence: Art, Money, & Power, and presented as a part of the eighth annual CAFE Symposium on February 8, 2023. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This poster is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cafe2023/23 Botticelli's Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a LadyWho is she? Why does her hair look like that? What is she looking at?"Idealized Portrait of a Lady" by Sandro Botticelli is licensed under CC0 1.0."The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli is licensed under CC0 1.0.La Bella SimonettaSimonetta Vespucci perfectly exemplifies how women could be influential, despite societal limitations. The lover of Giuliano de'Medici, yet married to Marco Vespucci, Simonetta served as a political pawn between the families. Due to her impersonal role in joining the families, one can only imagine what Simonetta felt and thought about her true influence and impact on the city. The center of much public attention, her painted features, especially the contrast between her skin and the background, as well as the reflection of light within her eye creates an air of “charged silence” about the portrait (Basta). IntroAn epicenter for innovation, creativity, and utter beauty, Renaissance Florence was a city of marvel. Like every shiny object , however, things were not always as perfect as they seemed. From patronage to the patriarchy, the daily happenings in the city were a man’s game, and women were viewed as nothing more than a commodity to be traded for the mutual benefit of families. Well-versed in portraiture, Sandro Botticelli brilliantly sheds light on the life of his muse and on typical societal expectations of women within the confines of a frame.BibliographyBasta, Chiara. Botticelli. 1st ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2005.Ettle, Ross Brooke. “THE VENUS DILEMMA: NOTES ON BOTTICELLI AND SIMONETTA CATTANEO VESPUCCI.” Notes in the History of Art 27, no. 4 (2008): 3–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23207901.Landini, Roberta Orsi and Mary Westerman Bulgarella. “Costume in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Portraits of Women.” In Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, edited by David Alan Brown, 89-97. Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art, 2001.Lugli, Emanuele. “The Hair Is Full of Snares: Botticelli's and Boccaccio's Wayward Erotic Gaze.” Mitteilungen Des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 2019. 202-213.Städel Museum in Frankfurt. “Sandro Botticelli: Idealised Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as a Nymph ca. 1480-1485.” Accessed November 8, 2022. https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/idealised-portrait-of-a-ladyTinagli, Paola. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. 47-77.Zambrano, Patrizia. “Sandro Botticelli and the Birth of Modern Portraiture.” In Botticelli Past and Present, edited by Ana Debenedetti and Caroline Elam, 10–35. UCL Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv550cgj.7.Commonly including “unknown and ungraspable” elements within his works, by comparing three of his most famous pieces, connections between the 15th-century Renaissance and classical times emerge. Known to “disrupt fixed interpretations” by using a “rigidity [that] conceals dramatically different and irreconcilable [messages] with the theme,” Botticelli chose not to include an elaborate background so as to not detract from the sole focus of the portrait– Simonetta Vespucci (Basta). This artistic choice varies greatly from the status quo of Renaissance portraiture, of which is exemplified below in the Lippi portrait. Although the two portraits of women greatly differ, both communicate much about familial wealth and status, as well as demonstrate how portraits conveyed social values.A true master of his craft, Botticelli understood the complexity of art and how to manipulate the tiniest details to influence the theme of a piece. The seemingly chaotic and fantastical coiffure of Miss Simonetta features very purposeful  nuances that convey a more convoluted yet specific message. Depicting a tasseled hairstyle resembling ropes and levers, a Stanford scholar argues Botticelli attempts to “[pull] the spectator’s attention in.” With braids representing tension and distance, and women serving as objects of unravelling tension between families, Lugli proposes the hairstyle itself challenges Renaissance norms of what is versus is not allowed. Lugli further notes that hair can provide clues for identifying thought patterns and values of a subject–perhaps even suggesting that Botticelli “deliberately blurred the contours between life and dream.”Furthermore, by including  such fantastical details uncommon for the Renaissance but not for the classical period, Botticelli once again draws on antiquarian themes, perhaps even suggesting a lack of differences and progression between women’s roles in the two time periods (Basta). ”Mars and Venus" by Sandro Botticelli is licensed under CC0 1.0.AcknowledgementsEndless gratitude to my first-year seminar professor, Professor Felicia Else, for not only encouraging, supporting, and believing in me, but also for her enthusiasm and energy that inspired me to dive deeper into the subject, just as she did in each class.  By adding relevance to art history, Professor Else demonstrated that there is always more to something than what initially meets the eye.I also would like to thank the Musselman Library librarians for all their guidance and patience during the poster making process and for organizing the CAFÉ symposium.  ConclusionLinking his passion for mythological paintings to the modern Renaissance and featuring Simonetta as the subject of not just her portrait but also as nymph-like figures in fantastical settings, Botticelli compares her beauty to that beyond the mortal realm and explicitly connects a typical Renaissance woman to antiquarian one, allowing viewers to find similarities between women’s roles during the two periods themselves. Alessia Buoso, FYS 197, Gettysburg College Art History DepartmentThe Significance of HairBackground: Botticelli with Women and Portraiture"Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement" by Fra Filippo Lippi is licensed under CC0 1.0.

Botticelli\u27s Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a Lady

https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&amp;context=cafe2023

Botticelli\u27s Marvelous Mystery: Idealized Portrait of a Lady

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Gettysburg College