Ginevra de benci biography of donald
C A T C H L I G H T
Following on from my previous post, I’m pleased to report I’ve put the wheels in motion to receive a copy of Sara Penco’s book, Mary Magdalen in Michelangelo’s Judgement, to be delivered on Christmas Day.
A representative of the publisher Scripta Maneant kindly informed me yesterday that the book will be on sale in Rome from today, 13 December.
In the meantime I would like to share with readers of this blog more information about the section that portrays Mary Magdalen kissing the Cross as shown here.
There are four main figures which all relate to each other: the muscular man carrying the cross; the bearded person supporting the cross beam on his arm; the bald-headed figure in white placed behind the cross; and the woman kissing the cross, identified as Mary Magdalen. Another feature that links to the figures is the pair of mysterious hands extending from the right edge of the fresco.
It’s important to note that the figures have more than one identity. Some are linked to Michelangelo’s supposed adversary Leonardo da Vinci and his Last Supper mural.
However, two of the figures also have a direct link to Michelangelo’s earlier fresco of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in particular the panel illustrating the Creation of Adam.
In March last year I posted an item titled Look-a-likes and the Big Reveal in which I pointed out the figure of God the Father represented Leonardo da Vinci and that the angel on his shoulder, Michelangelo. I also disclosed that Leonardo was depicted as the figure of Adam, created in the image of God (Genesis 1 :27).
It is these two figures that Michelangelo replicated in this section of the Last Judgment, the bearded man uplifting the cross as God the Father, and the man bearing the cross representing Christ as the Second Adam (Leonardo).
There is a reason why Michelangelo depicted Leonardo as the Christ. He took his lead from Leonardo’s own portrayal as a crucified figure in
The New Yorker, March 25, 1967 P. 39
Biography of Ginevra di Amerigo di Giovanni di Amerigo di Simone di Ser Donato de' Benci, born in 1462, whose portrait, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, was acquired by the National Gallery in Washington. The de' Bencis were a wealthy Florentine family. In 1462 they bought 2 4-story houses in town, on the Via degli Alberti, and made them over into a single pazzo, which they occupied as their winter residence. (The street is known as the Via de' Benci, and the palazzo is No. 16.) Ginevra grew up in Florence, and was married in the palazzo on Jan. 15, 1474. The bridegroon was a 32-year-old widower, Luigi di Bernardo di Lapo di Giovanni di Lapo Niccolini. The Niccolinis were a respected family, but their fortune was a modest one. One reason for the low state of his finances was said to be Ginera's poor health, she was under constant care of physcians. Because of her diminutive size, she was called La Bencina, or the wee Benci. Niccolini died in 1505. Ginevra died in 1520, leaving a small estate to her brother Giovanni. It was perhaps Giovanni who was indirectly responsible for the fact that well over 400 years after her death, the name of the wee Benci made front pages all ove a continent of which she can scarcely have heard, and was broadcast by radio and TV throughout the world.
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How Much Is Fact?
Da Vinci's Tiger
(Beware of a few spoilers!)
While DA VINCI’S TIGER is fiction, my dramatization of Ginevra de’ Benci’s life is rooted in fact and carefully researched. Writing it was a delight because the historical truths of Ginevra, the Medici, and the artists of 15 century Florence are so fascinating and inherently dramatic. The novel practically wrote itself. For instance, the novel begins with a joust and ends with an assassination—both which actually occurred. And the title was easy—emanating from the only remaining line of Ginevra’s poetry: I beg your pardon, I am a mountain tiger. In and of itself that wondrously bodacious line was enough to make me itch to know more about the person behind that graceful, self-contained face of Leonardo’s portrait!
And then, of course, there is Leonardo da Vinci himself—one of the most complex, inspiring maverick-thinkers in human history. How lucky was I to get to write this?!
(Ginevra de' Benci, Photo credit: National Gallery of Art)
Here are the facts of her portrait: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci was a turning point in Italian Renaissance painting, representing a number of firsts. In addition to being Leonardo’s first portrait and probably his first solo commission, Ginevra de’ Benci is the first Italian portrait to turn a woman from profile to facing forward, out toward her viewer. Almost all female portraits were commissioned for weddings, displaying the bride laden with jewels, dressed in the most sumptuous and colorful of gowns, her hair elaborately coifed. Gazing modestly to the side at nothing, these women were essentially advertisements of their families’ wealth and position, gorgeous but impersonal icons of feminine beauty, possessions to be admired.
(Portrait of a Young Lady by Antonio Del Pollaiuolo, Uffizi Gallery; Young Lady of Fashion by Paolo Uccello, Gardner Museum,
“I ask your forgiveness; I am a mountain tiger”
“Why does she ask forgiveness?/For what and from whom?/Why does she call herself/a mountain tiger?”
Ti chiedo perdono: sono una tigre di montagna
Ginevra de’ Benci, 1457–1521
We know this woman only because
Leonardo painted her portrait
when both of them were young,
her father a Florentine merchant,
her brother da Vinci’s friend.
Herself a beauty, married at sixteen
to a widower twice her age,
she was said to be sickly all her life,
childless, sad, possibly married
to someone she didn’t love.
This last just speculation;
we’ll never know. We do know
she wrote poetry, but only a single line
has come to us down the years.
Why does she ask forgiveness?
For what and from whom?
Why does she call herself
a mountain tiger?.
W. D. Ehrhart has authored or edited a number of collections of poetry and prose, most recently Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems and What We Can and Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life, both from McFarland & Company, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Wales at Swansea and taught at The Haverford School in Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2019.