Feinberg L.J. The Young Leonardo: Art and Life in Fifteenth-Century Florence
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16. Leonardo and Ginevra de’ Benci 107
Figure 43.
Reverse of Ginevra
de’ Benci,fig.42.
Image courtesy of the
Board of Trustees,
National Gallery of Art,
Washington.
Ginevra’s mouth and chest, because a proper Florentine lady did not
expose her teeth or breasts. We tend to associate this extremely literal
use of visual metaphor with later Florentine art, such as portraits by
the sixteenth-century painter-poet Agnolo Bronzino, with their hard,
alabaster skin and gold-filament hair. However, through such aesthetic
posturing, a collusive nod to the literati of the court, Leonardo may
have sought admittance to the cultural and intellectual elite, despite
his lack of much formal education.
Moreover, the picture may have been Leonardo’s opening salvo in
the long debate over the paragone, the comparative merits of painting
and poetry, an issue popular in Italian Renaissance courts and a bone
of contention for Leonardo throughout much of his life; he would
participate in a discussion of the subject at Sforza Castle in Milan
in 1498. At about the time that Columbus landed in the Americas
(and in the year of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death), the artist was busy
108 The Young Leonardo
drafting arguments in favor of painting over poetry, preserved in his
manuscripts:
And if you, poet, claim to portray a story as if painting
with your pen, the painter with his brush will more readily
satisfy and will be understood less tediously. If you assert
that painting is dumb poetry, then the painter may call
poetry blind painting.
– [the sense of] hearing [as concerns recited poetry or
music] is less noble than sight, in that as it is born so it
dies and its death is an swift as its birth. This does not
apply to the sense of sight, because if you represent to the
eye a beautiful human body composed of proportionally
beautiful parts, this beauty will not be so mortal or so
rapidly destroyed as music. Instead it has great permanence
and remains to be seen and considered by you.
Take the case of the poet describing the beauties of a lady
to her lover and that of a painter who makes a portrait
of her; you will see whither nature will more incline the
enamored judge. Surely the proof of the matter ought to
rest upon the verdict of experience!
The exercise of visual metaphor in the Ginevra was only one of
Leonardo’s pointed demonstrations of the “literary” capabilities of
painting. Almost certainly at the instigation of the patron, he employed
other literary conceits in this work as well – namely, the motto on
the reverse, Virtutem Forma Decorat (Form [or Beauty] Adorns Virtue),
devised by Bembo, and the placement of a juniper (ginepro) behind
the sitter, a play on her name. Among the great book collectors of the
century, the humanist Bembo was extremely knowledgeable about
ancient and modern encomium, and he fathered – and mentored –
the famous poet, later cardinal, Pietro Bembo. An aspiring poet her-
self, Ginevra would have appreciated the laconically gracious Latin
inscription and visual pun.
Just as the various sonnets lauded Ginevra’s virtues and appear-
ance in a lofty, grandiloquent manner, Leonardo has so idealized his
subject that his work just barely qualifies as a portrait. The promi-
nent, high forehead, extraordinarily wide-set, almond eyes, glowing
white skin, and perfectly cylindrical neck seem to be so extensively
16. Leonardo and Ginevra de’ Benci 109
Figure 44.
Lorenzo di Credi
(attributed to), Portrait
of a Lady (Ginevra de’
Benci?), c. 1473–74,oil
on panel, New York,
Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Image copyright
C
Metropolitan
Museum of Art/Art
Resource, NY.
reformed that it is difficult to assign an age to the sitter and causes one
to wonder whether the image bears much likeness to the actual per-
son. That being the case, it is not completely reckless to speculate that
the very similar Portrait of a Lady (c. 1473–74), now in the Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art (fig. 44), where it is convincingly attributed to
Leonardo’s colleague, Lorenzo di Credi, could be an earlier depic-
tion of Ginevra, created in honor of her engagement (sposalizio)or
nuptials.
Although old attributions of artist and sitter are notoriously falli-
ble, it must be acknowledged that the New York painting is clearly
inscribed in a contemporary fifteenth-century hand on the reverse,
GINEVERA DE AM – BENCI. When executing this picture, its
author, too, emended the sitter’s physiognomy; one discovers in the
underlayers of paint, revealed by x-rays, that the shape of her face and
her features were originally extremely close to those of Leonardo’s
110 The Young Leonardo
Ginevra. Moreover, Credi’s slimmer, younger woman – probably a
teenager – holds a wedding ring, and stands before a comparable
juniper and a flourishing, young tree. Her plain, dark dress does not
necessarily indicate that she is a widow, as has sometimes been said.
Rather, her austere costume is in keeping with recently reestablished
(in 1472) sumptuary laws: the only jewelry she wears is a simple neck-
lace, another ritual wedding present of the groom, and she has neither
the typical, extravagantly embroidered sleeves of the period nor the
pearl-adorned frenello,orhairbridle.
It has long been assumed that Leonardo’s portrait, which has been
severelycutdownatbottom(Bembo’sdeviceonthereverseiscropped
at its base), at one time included the sitter’s arms and hands – rest-
ing in the graceful manner of those in the New York picture. A
deservedly famous, beautiful drawing of hands, holding flower stems,
in the Windsor Royal Library perhaps offers a good idea of how
Leonardo placed Ginevra’s; in fact, it may have served, as some have
suggested, as a preliminary study for the picture. If this supposition
is correct, then Leonardo’s lady would have closely approximated in
gesture and bearing certain sculptural portraits of Florentine matrons
by Verrocchio, including a Lady with a Small Bouquet of Flowers in
the Bargello. Although somewhat flat and relieflike in her truncated
state, Leonardo’s Ginevra must have had considerably more volumet-
ric presence, akin to Verrocchio’s bust, when she possessed her lower
torso and arms.
Compromised, too, are other spatial effects in the picture, due to
the slight darkening, or “sinking,” with age of some of the pigments,
particularly the greens of the juniper. However, careful scrutiny of
the foliage reveals how complex and sophisticated Leonardo’s evoca-
tion of light and air still is. Here he has relied almost exclusively on
subtle optical effects to generate space, as opposed to the underly-
ing linear perspective of his Annunciation. Whereas Ginevra’s hair and
other details have the Flemish precision of the Munich and Benois
Madonnas, the deftly varied brushwork of the foliage and distant trees
has a summarizing efficiency that is more suggestive than descrip-
tive. Traces of his fingerprints reveal that Leonardo achieved some
of these nuances of light and texture by gently touching and mod-
eling the wet paint with his hands. Noteworthy, too, is the way in
which Leonardo has set the luminous figure against the background.
His light–dark juxtaposition is not merely a style, an aesthetic effect,
but signals an emerging working method of complete originality
16. Leonardo and Ginevra de’ Benci 111
Figure 45.
Leonardo da Vinci,
Study of a Lady with a
Unicorn,c.1478–80?,
pen and ink, Oxford,
Ashmolean Museum
(1855 KPH 15). Cour-
tesy of the Ashmolean
Museum, University of
Oxford.
in which he will compose his pictures in a monochromatic, sepia
pattern of light and dark, and then apply color almost as a finishing
tint. This would become a standard procedure for him, as we shall see
in his later depictions of the Adoration of the Magi, Saint Jerome,andthe
Virgin of the Rocks. All of these innovative and progressive techniques,
so characteristic of Leonardo, support a date for the picture in the
late 1470s, rather than to the period of the rigid Annunciation,ashas
sometimes been argued.
The courtly ideal manifested in the portrait of Ginevra (the very
name conjuring up its Arthurian equivalent: Guinevere) is expressed
as well in a couple of Leonardo’s sketches for a Lady with a Unicorn,
which, some believe, may have been intended for the image on the
reverse of the painting, before the patron and artist decided to repro-
duce Bembo’s emblem (fig. 45). The broad head and neck of the lady
112 The Young Leonardo
in these drawings, particularly the Oxford sheet, resemble those of
Ginevra, and the presence of the mythical unicorn, which was sup-
posedly attracted only to maidens, would have underscored Ginevra’s
purity. Other portrait paintings, and some portrait medals, of the
period include similarly lovesick unicorns on their versos.
Most closely associated today with French art, because of the cul-
minating depictions of the Lady-and-Unicorn theme in the tapestry
series at Cluny and in the Cloisters Museum of New York, the subject
can actually be traced back to early Christian times; it is found in the
second- to fourth-century Physiologus (The Naturalist or Scientist), an
anonymous Greek compilation of descriptions and legends of animals
that had been given Christian interpretation. The entertaining text and
subject became popular across all of Europe, but particularly in France,
from the Middle Ages through to the Renaissance. The widely read
medieval Fior di virt
`
u also included a passage on the unicorn, reporting
that the male animal had “such a taste” for the company of young
maidens that “whenever he sees one he goes to her and falls asleep in
her arms.” The creature was further popularized in late-fourteenth-
century Italy in illustrated editions of the poet Petrarch’s epic Triumphs
(Trionfi), in which he described a series of imaginary processional cars,
including a Trionfo della Pudicizia (Triumph of Chastity), surmounted
by an allegorical, female figure of Chastity. Most of these manuscripts
depicted the car or float as drawn by a pair of ornamented unicorns.
By the fifteenth century, artists and artisans in Florence took up
the triumphal Lady-and-Unicorn theme in prints and in the deco-
ration of cassoni (wedding chests) and deschi da parto (trays painted to
celebrate the birth of a child), where the imagery was connected with
marriage and used to emphasize the bride’s unblemished devotion.
Pudicizia, in this context, did not mean celibacy, but purity, modesty,
and fidelity – that is, all of the wifely virtues. In presenting the uni-
corn with its muzzle in the lady’s lap, a drawing by Leonardo in the
British Museum is especially close to cassone and print depictions of
the theme. Leonardo’s Oxford study was thus likely a second take on
the subject, as he shows the unicorn, no less smitten with his lovely
captor but kept on a very short leash.
17. Leonardo as Portraitist
and Master of the Visual Pun
A
lthough the GINEVRA DE’ BENCI commission proba bly
ga ve Leonardo only limited access to the Medici court
during his first period in Florence, the success of the work firmly
established his credentials as a portraitist and led to equally impor-
tant projects: the Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, a portrait of the wife
of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant and civic leader Francesco
del Giocondo, as well as an elegant portrait of the noble Milanese
lady, Cecilia Gallerani (fig. 46). From Vasari, we know that Leonardo
also drew (much later) a portrait of the famous merchant-explorer
Amerigo Vespucci, for whom America was named. The artist’s rela-
tionship with Vespucci, who was portrayed, according to Vasari, at
an advanced age, may have been long term. Both spent most of their
youth and early adulthood in Florence. Vespucci (a cousin by marriage
of the tragic beauty Simonetta) was only a year older than Leonardo,
and his father, from a family of wine and silk merchants, was also a
Medici notary. More significantly, the young men were kindred spir-
its – boldly inquisitive with strong interests in “natural philosophy”
(science), geography, and cartography. Over time, they formed enough
of a friendship that Vespucci gave Leonardo a book on geometry, a
most extravagant present.
The explorer would have imparted to the artist not only firsthand
observations about the fauna and flora of the Old and (later) New
World but also wonderful misinformation of the most sensational
kind. He told of cannibals in America who had consumed hundreds
of people, including women and children, and had salted human hams
(prosciutti umani). Open-minded and somewhat hedonistic, Vespucci
relished reporting the sexual customs of the native women, who, he
said, offered themselves to any man and injected their partners’ penises
113
114 The Young Leonardo
Figure 46.
Leonardo da Vinci,
Portrait of Cecilia
Gallerani (Lady with
an Ermine), c. 1485,
oil on panel, Cracow,
Czartoryski Museum.
Nimatallah/Art
Resource, NY.
with toxins to make them swell to more satisfying proportions. With
barely concealed admiration he concluded that “[among the natives]
there is no private property; everything is owned in common. With
neither king nor governor each man is his own master. They have
as many sexual partners as they desire – . They have no temples, no
religion, worship no idols. What else can I say? They live according to
nature.” Leonardo would have listened to Vespucci’s words with rapt
attention and, perhaps, a sense of affirmation for his own unconven-
tional attitudes.
Unfortunately, attempts to identify Vespucci’s face among the
numerous heads Leonardo drew in his notebooks over the years have
proved futile. Extant portraits of the explorer vary greatly in appear-
ance, some showing a husky man, others a gaunt, elderly person in
profile, with eyes set especially high on his face. Although the sec-
ond type (seen in an oft-reproduced painting in the Uffizi and in
17. Leonardo as Portraitist and Master of the Visual Pun 115
Figure 47.
Leonardo da Vinci,
Rebuses,c.1487–90,
pen and ink, Windsor
Castle, Royal Library.
The Royal Collection
C
2010 Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II.
engravings) might actually derive, ultimately, from Leonardo’s lost
portrait, none of his drawings corresponds to it closely.
So far as we know, the Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci was the first
example of what became one of Leonardo’s more unusual “literary”
pursuits. Some years later, in his Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (or Lady
with an Ermine) fashioned at the behest of the Milanese Duke Ludovico
Sforza, whose mistress she was, Leonardo again demonstrated his keen
wit; that work, like the Ginevra with its juniper, contains a prominent
visual pun. On one level, the tense ermine alludes to Cecilia’s politely
restrained, kinetic intellect as well as to her purity; both the Fior di
virt
`
u and Leonardo’s own bestiary celebrate the animal for its “nobility”
and supposedly exceptional hygiene. However, Cecilia’s pet also makes
punning reference to her last name; the Greek word for the animal
is “gal
´
ee.” Similarly, the reticent smile of the Mona Lisa, coaxed or
116 The Young Leonardo
Figure 48.
Leonardo da Vinci,
Madonna of the Yarn-
winder,c.1501,oilon
panel, Drumlanrig
Castle, Collection of
the Duke of Buccleuch.
Snark/Art Resource,
NY.
invented by the artist, may have been meant as a pun; her name, “La
Gioconda,” means the “jocund” or “cheerful” woman.
Visual puns and rebuses – amusing puzzles that depend on the
assonance of words that have different meanings (serial visual puns,
really) – would become a hobby of sorts for Leonardo. A double-
sided page (fig. 47), preserved at Windsor Castle, is completely covered
with more than 130 tiny rebuses that Leonardo contrived, probably
the lone surviving specimen of several such sheets; just a half-dozen
small scraps remain from some of those missing pages. These quasi-
cryptic pictographs were as close to a “code” as anything Leonardo