Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci (1453 – 26 April 1476), nicknamed la bella Simonetta,was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer, navigator & cartographer.
Simonetta was Botticelli’s muse and Italy’s 15th century Florentine “super model”. Simonetta Vespucci’s figure would help shape the Renaissance. She was born in a village near Genoa, some believe Porto Venere (Venus Harbour, where it is said that the Goddess Venus stepped from the sea). She was married at the age of 15 and died at 22, her short but sweet life inspired one of the greatest artists of Renaissance and the wealthiest men in the world.
She arrived in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, as a fifteen-year old bride, her husband Marco Vespucci was a noble man and had close ties to the Medici’s. In a few short years Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci would catapult to fame as the most beautiful woman in Italy, beloved of an entire city.
In 1469, the city of Florence was entering its golden age of power and influence. Young Lorenzo de Medici and his brother Giuliano had just taken control of the Medici house upon the death of their father Piero. Although the Medici’s did not openly rule in the city, everyone knew to whom the government of Florence answered.
Lorenzo de Medici enjoyed power and banking and used his great wealth to surround himself with the finest painters, sculptors, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals of his day, among them, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli.
These most prominent Renaissance men got together and created a canon of beauty. They decided the rules of what makes the perfect woman. They believed that such a woman didn’t exist outside art, poetry or their wildest imaginations, until Simonetta arrived in Florence.
The prolific artist, Sandro Botticelli, whose masterpieces include The Birth of Venus and Primavera, studied art alongside da Vinci in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio during the 1460s. Botticelli was on his way to becoming a well-known artist, but had not yet met his muse, that is, until Marco Vespucci and his pretty new wife, Simonetta moved next door.
Botticelli fell hopelessly in love with Simonetta, who often posed for him in the nude. Certainly she was Botticelli’s Venus; her long, swan-like neck, straight aristocratic nose, flowing golden hair and curvy figure, were the model on which many of his masterpieces were based. In La Bella Simonetta, Botticelli had met his muse. He painted Simonetta over and over again, even years after her death.
Botticelli wasn’t the only artist to paint Simonetta, she sat for Piero de Cosimo and others. She became the Renaissance equivalent of Marilyn Monroe and though she was married, besotted noblemen lavished her with gifts and parties, poets and musicians wrote about her and for her; Artists competed for her time as a model. She enchanted all of Florence, perhaps all of Italy, with her loveliness and vibrancy.
Posted by mancinblack on Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:14 | #
By contrast, “It is likely that no one had ever said she was beautiful…and may indeed have described her as plain or even ugly.” wrote Jan Marsh in her biography of Jane Morris (née Burden).Nonetheless, “Janey” as her friends called her married William Morris and became the muse of Gabriel Dante Rossetti and the darling of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Once immortalized on canvas, Janey’s lanky, pale, pouting dark looks proved revolutionary. By the 1870’s writer Mary Eliza Hawks observed that “certain types of face and figure once literally hated are actually the fashion. A pallid face with a protruding lip is highly esteemed. In fact, the pink cheeked dolls are nowhere; they are said to have ‘no character’ “.
“I was a holy thing to them” Janey remarked when reminiscing of her early days with the Pre-Raphaelites. The Scottish politician John Bruce Glasier called her “a veritable Astarte - a being, so I thought, who did not quite belong to our mortal world.” To Rossetti “Beauty like hers is genius”.
Also in contrast to Simonetta Vespucci, Jane Burden was not born into privilege. Her father was a stable hand and her mother a laundress. Janey met Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones (who would use her image in numerous stained glass windows) during a Drury Lane theatre performance. Struck by her appearance they asked her if she would sit for them. When she became engaged to William Morris, she was offered the chance to have a private education, which proved to be the making of her, as it transpired that she was in fact highly intelligent, becoming proficient in both French and Italian and an accomplished classical pianist. She would also become an artist in her own right through her embroidery work. In addition she could easily move in upper class circles, having refined her speech and manners to the point that many of her contemporaries referred to her as “Queenly”. Janey was widely regarded as the inspiration for the 1884 novel “Miss Brown” by Vernon Lee. George Bernard Shaw would later use Lee’s Miss Brown as the basis for his Eliza Doolittle character in “Pygmalion” (1914).
From plain Jane Burden, destined for a life of servitude, to an icon who literally changed what people thought of as beauty and a veritable goddess to a number of her admirers. That takes some beating.
Posted by mancinblack on Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:14 | #
By contrast, “It is likely that no one had ever said she was beautiful…and may indeed have described her as plain or even ugly.” wrote Jan Marsh in her biography of Jane Morris (née Burden).Nonetheless, “Janey” as her friends called her married William Morris and became the muse of Gabriel Dante Rossetti and the darling of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Once immortalized on canvas, Janey’s lanky, pale, pouting dark looks proved revolutionary. By the 1870’s writer Mary Eliza Hawks observed that “certain types of face and figure once literally hated are actually the fashion. A pallid face with a protruding lip is highly esteemed. In fact, the pink cheeked dolls are nowhere; they are said to have ‘no character’ “.
“I was a holy thing to them” Janey remarked when reminiscing of her early days with the Pre-Raphaelites. The Scottish politician John Bruce Glasier called her “a veritable Astarte - a being, so I thought, who did not quite belong to our mortal world.” To Rossetti “Beauty like hers is genius”.
Also in contrast to Simonetta Vespucci, Jane Burden was not born into privilege. Her father was a stable hand and her mother a laundress. Janey met Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones (who would use her image in numerous stained glass windows) during a Drury Lane theatre performance. Struck by her appearance they asked her if she would sit for them. When she became engaged to William Morris, she was offered the chance to have a private education, which proved to be the making of her, as it transpired that she was in fact highly intelligent, becoming proficient in both French and Italian and an accomplished classical pianist. She would also become an artist in her own right through her embroidery work. In addition she could easily move in upper class circles, having refined her speech and manners to the point that many of her contemporaries referred to her as “Queenly”. Janey was widely regarded as the inspiration for the 1884 novel “Miss Brown” by Vernon Lee. George Bernard Shaw would later use Lee’s Miss Brown as the basis for his Eliza Doolittle character in “Pygmalion” (1914).
From plain Jane Burden, destined for a life of servitude, to an icon who literally changed what people thought of as beauty and a veritable goddess to a number of her admirers. That takes some beating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDtoH1WoWQg