Portraits For The Tornabuoni Family by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli

GIOVANNA AND GINEVRA: PORTRAITS FOR THE TORNABUONI FAMILY BY
GHIRLANDAIO AND BOTTICELLI

Author(s): PATRICIA SIMONS
Source: I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance , 2011-2012, Vol. 14/15 (2011-2012), pp.
103-135
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Villa I Tatti, The Harvard
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
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GIOVANNA AND GINEVRA:
PORTRAITS FOR THE TORNABUONI FAMILY
BY GHIRLANDAIO AND BOTTICELLI
PATRICIA SIMONS
The muchmuch
visualattention
attentionlately, evident
culture in atofleast
lately, four major
marriage exhibitions
evident in in Renaissance at least four Italy major has exhibitions attracted
mounted over the years 2008-10.1 When, in the summer of
2010, 1 visited the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid to see the ex-
hibition devoted to Domenico Ghirlandaio's portrait of Lorenzo Tor-
nabuoni's wife Giovanna degli Albizzi (Fig. 1), I realized that my dis-
sertation completed decades ago still had a story to tell. Continuing
errors in the identification of certain Tornabuoni portraits are informed
by ahistorical or romanticizing assumptions that occasionally imbue
current scholarship on marital imagery.2 By taking a forensic approach
to the portraits of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and his successive wives, I hope
1 This essay has benefited from comments graciously offered by Caroline Elam, Jonathan
Nelson, and the anonymous readers. I am also indebted to Rab Hatfield, whose generosity with
documents long ago enriched my own archival explorations. Elizabeth Mellyn kindly checked
the updating of archival seganture. All archival references are to the Archivio di Stato, Florence.
All dates cited are new style.
In chronological order, the exhibitions were The Triumph of Marriage: Vainted Cassoni of
the Renaissance , Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (Baskins et al. 2008); Art and Love
in Renaissance Italy , New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Bayer 2008); Love and
Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding Chests , London, Courtauld Gallery
(Campbell 2009); and Virtù d'amore : Pittura nuziale nel quattrocento fiorentino , Florence, Gal-
leria dell'Accademia e Museo Home (Paolini, Parenti and Sebregondi 2010). Marriage was
also a central but not exclusive theme in the ground-breaking exhibition on domestic arts, At
Home in Renaissance Italy, London, Victoria and Albert Museum (Ajmar-Wollheim and Den-
nis 2006). For a review of the 2008 exhibitions at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Simons and Schmitter 2009.
2 VAN DER Sman 2010a (references will be to the English translation at the end of the
book). Earlier bibliography on Ghirlandaio's panel portrait includes Cadogan 2000, 174-
176, 277-278, no. 46; Brown 2001, 190-193, no. 30. This article draws on Simons 1985,
esp. 2:143-145, 169-175, 305-306, 311-313. Due to a misunderstanding about copyright,
UMI long withheld the dissertation but it is now available through Proquest and alternatively
can be accessed and downloaded without charge at http://deepblue. lib. umich. edu/handle/
2027. 42/78007.
103

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PATRICIA SIMONS
not only to resolve specific confusions but also to suggest how to elu-
cidate the genre of marital portraiture, especially of women, with an
historically informed, broad analysis.3
The current tendency to situate what seems to be nearly every secu-
lar work of art within the context of marriage should be modulated, as
should assumptions about appropriate, "private," or purely personal
imagery. For example, it was a life-long bachelor, the Venetian patri-
arch Gabriel Vendramin, who commissioned, in about 1545, Titian's
lively depiction of Cupid conquering a formerly ferocious lion to func-
tion as the cover for the portrait of a woman (who was probably not a
mistress).4 Two paintings of circa 1425 showing the race and presenta-
tion of banners during the feast day of Florence's patron saint John the
Baptist are profoundly civic scenes decorating marriage chests. s As
with other rites of passage, certain (though far from all) marriages oc-
casioned public spectacles and domestic decoration in an elite culture
that required magnificent display in both palaces and piazzas. For mar-
ital or other reasons, Renaissance portraiture placed personages on ex-
hibit for audiences that went beyond the familiar and familial to the
communal and foreign. Lorenzo's gilded room housing Giovanna's
portrait, admired even by a usually sanguine notary as "bella," would
have impressed visiting Florentines as well as numerous foreign digni-
taries who were accommodated in the Tornabuoni palace.6 Medals of
various Tornabuoni men and women, including the newly wed Giovan-
na, were objects that circulated outside the boundaries of family and
city.
Such visual, expensive statements were expected to last forever,
eternally presenting figures in prayer and pious witness in the case of
religious portraiture and preserving ancestors for the sake of future
generations. Ghirlandaio's consummate profile (Fig. 1) commemorated
Giovanna's death in 1488, two years after she married Lorenzo Torna-
buoni. Ghirlandaio also frescoed at least one, and I contend two, por-
traits of her within the family chapel in Florence (Figs. 2, 11), and these
shed further light on her status. I will also demonstrate that Lorenzo's
3 See also the judicious study in Fahy 2008.

4 Whistler 2012, 218-242.
5 Lorenzo Sbaraglio's entry in Paolini, Parenti and Sebregondi 2010, 258-261, no. 30.
6 Pupilli avanti il Principato (hereafter Pupilli) 181, fol. 148r: "chamera di Lorenzo bel-
la." Some of the foreign visitors are noted in Landucci 1883, 23, 85, 260, 263, 277.
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GIOVANNA AND GINEVRA
second wife, Ginevra Gianfigliazzi, who is neglected by scholars, ap

pears behind Giovanna in the chapel's Visitation (Fig. 2) and with
her husband in the family's villa (Fig. 3), where she was portrayed by
Sandro Botticelli about four years later than the usual date given to
his painting.
Renaissance portraiture was about much more than the individual
sitter alone, for what is now conceptualized as "identity" was a com
plex, layered amalgam of the personal and political; dynastic and eco-
nomic; amorous and pious; and present, future, and eternal. To say of
Lorenzo and Giovanni that they shared "high ideals and a yearning for
beauty" is to be presumptuous not only about a couple married for just
two years but about the very process of history.7 We cannot so easily
know the personalities and aesthetic values of particular people, let
alone assume that throughout time standards of "beauty" remain un-
changed and uninflected.8
In the instances examined here, certain portraits of women con-
tinue to be misidentified or ignored due to the assumption that Renais-
sance women had a more generic identity and were visualized within
highly conventional, idealized parameters of "beauty." While that is
true in some ways, it neither holds for every woman nor makes all por-
traits of women anonymous. Many portraits of Renaissance men as well
as women remain unidentified, and we can never be sure how closely
any portrait matched the actual physiognomy of the sitter at the time.
The assumption about the idealized nature of female portraiture can
become virtually circular in its ideological bias, in that distinctive, indi-
vidualized portraits are not seen as such because they are thought to be
merely representations of a feminine type. Nor are such assumptions
logical or consistently applied. Whereas some portraits of Giovanna
are readily identified (mistakenly so in the case of Botticelli's fresco),
other female faces are considered too conventionally generalized and
thus go unrecognized. As I will also show, some of Lorenzo's portraits
follow convention so well that they, too, have been misidentified.
Female portraits in the Tornabuoni chapel have especially suffered
from frequent reiteration of unsubstantiated conjecture.9 Confusion
7 The quotation is from van der Sm an 2010b, 5.

8 For a sophisticated analysis of "beauty" in relation to female portraiture, see Cropper
1986, 175-190.
9 For example, Bargellini 1945, 183-195; Anrep-Bjurling 1980; Schmid 2002, 119-
105

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PATRICIA SIMONS
about which woman is depicted occurred as early as 1550, when Gior-

gio Vasari identified an unspecified woman in the Visitation as the
famed beauty Ginevra de' Benci, which was at least accurate in the first
name.10 The Benci woman, actually portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci
can still be mistakenly situated in the chapel.11 The documentary, con-
textual, material, and visual evidence offered here aims to put to rest
the ongoing misidentification of the portraits of Lorenzo and his suc-
cessive wives.
The Tornabuoni were powerful Florentine oligarchs, one of several
branches that for political reasons split off from the large Tornaquinci
clan or consorteria in the later fourteenth century, while retaining eco-
nomic and social ties.12 Lorenzo was a member of the most prominent
and wealthy family within this clan. His father, Giovanni di Francesco
Tornabuoni (1428-1497), was a partner and manager of the powerful
Rome branch of the Medici Bank with his in-laws (his sister Lucrezia
was the mother of Lorenzo il Magnifico) before returning to Florence
more or less permanently in 1485. 13 Giovanni commissioned Ghirlan-
daio's work in the cappella maggiore of Santa Maria Novella (1486-
90), a chapel also adorned at his expense with stained glass, intarsia
choir stalls, candelabra, vestments, embroidered pallium, and a dou-
ble-sided altarpiece. By the 1490s, his capital investments included va-
luable jewelry, more than fifty pieces of rural land, a large palace in the
center of the city, and two villas.14
Lorenzo (1468-1497) was, as Francesco Guicciardini reported, also
"a very generous man and had spent a great deal of money" as a patron
and consumer, esteemed for his gentility as well as his wealth, being a
"noble and gracious youth more beloved by the entire people than any-
131. The old notion that the rightmost woman among the visitors in the Birth of the Baptist is
Giovanni's sister Lucrezia Tornabuoni has recently been mistakenly reversed, and it has thus
been said that Lucrezia (aged fifty-six when she died in 1482) is the young woman on the
far left, "in her most expensive finery, staring out at the viewer": Campbell and Cole 2012,
291.
10 VASARI 1991, 1:465; Vasari 1906, 3:266.

11 For example, in Lawless 2003, 116.
12 On the consorteria , including the Giachinotti, Popoleschi and Tornabuoni offshoots,
see Pampaloni 1968; Simons 1985; Plebani 2002.
13 de Roover 1963, esp. 223-224; Simons 1985, esp. chap. 3.
14 See esp. Carte Strozziane (hereafter CS), Ser. II, 124, fols. 76v-77v; Notarile Ante-
cosimiano (hereafter NA) 5675 (formerly C 644), fols. 47r-50r; NA 1924 (formerly B 910), in-
sert 1, fols. 281r-87v; Decima Repubblicana 25, fol. 605r; Pupilli 181, fols. 141r-50r.
106

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one his age."15 Educated in part with his cousins, the children of Lo-
renzo de' Medici, and a student of Greek under Angelo Poliziano,
was in the top echelon of Florentine cultural and political circles. Gio
vanni's sole legitimate son, Lorenzo, was probably keen to continue th
lineage, and he married at the age of eighteen, very early for a Floren
tine man, producing a son with his first wife Giovanna. Upon her un
timely death while pregnant again, he established a chapel in her hon
at the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, often called Cestello, where
rebuilding campaign under Medicean aegis was under way.16 His se
ond wife, Ginevra Gianfigliazzi, whom he married in 1491, bore h
a son and two daughters, but during the 1490s he was also engage
in financial and political troubles resulting from the faltering fortune
of the Medici after Lorenzo il Magnifico's death in April 1492 an
the expulsion of the son Piero in November 1494. 17 One of five men
charged with treason in August 1497, he was unceremoniously b
headed by the anti-Medicean Republic in the middle of the night.1
For more than forty years thereafter, the Tornabuoni estate was tied
up in complex legal maneuvers: confiscated by the state, on the on
hand, but on the other hand part of the inheritance of Lorenzo's youn
children, whose property was officially administered by the magistrac
of the Pupilli (wards).19 Cannily, to forestall the possibility of financi
ruin, Giovanni had ceded much of his property to his two grandsons
legally bypassing Lorenzo, though that strategy only helped delay wha
was eventually the dispersal of the estate, including the sale of the vil
with Botticelli's frescoes in 1541 and the palace in 1542. 20
At the time of the portraits under consideration here, however, th
Tornabuoni were wealthy landowners. Just as they gathered in an ar
rich with familial associations within the city, the Tornabuoni's large
15 Guicciardini 1970, 134. Other contemporary praise includes Cerretani 1994, 217
237, 239; Nardi 1888, 107. On Lorenzo's patronage, see Simons 1985, 1:136-138, includ
Giovanni Banchegli's, Aritmetica (where he is called "magnifico"), and passim for his edu
tion; van der Sman 2010b, 12-157, passim.
16 Luchs 1977, esp. 21, 42-45, 86-88, 116, 119, n. 3, 149, n. 50, 283-286, 348, 349. Bette
known by the name Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi due to a later change in dedication, t
church will hereafter be referred to as Cestello.
17 Guicciardini 1970, 134; van der Sman 2010b, 130-157.
18 Landucci 1883, 155-157; Parenti 1994-2005, 2:121-124; Simons 1985, 2:113-114
n. 166; van der Sman 2010b, 149-156.
19 Van der Sman 2010b, 159-160.
20 Simons 1985, 2:113, n. 165; Kuehn 2009, 1:63-82; van der Sman 2010b, 144, 160
107

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PATRICIA SIMONS
clan, the Tornaquinci, clustered their country holdings in a traditional

area that extended beyond the walls to the north and northwest of
Florence, fanning out from Santa Maria Novella, which was a base
of ancestral patronage and devotion.21 Giovanni focused on two villas
in the consorteria" s stronghold, one at Chiasso Macerelli in the parish of
San Stefano in Pane and the other, called Le Bracche, near Castello.22
The first property was the original site of Botticelli's frescoes (Figs. 4-
5), discovered in 1873 under whitewash in a top-story room, one on
either side of a window overlooking the countryside (Fig. 6). 23 These
frescoes, one showing a young man welcomed by the Liberal Arts,
the other a young woman greeted by Venus and her attendant Graces,
were detached by the then-owner Petronio Lemmi and sold to the Mu-
sée du Louvre in 1882.
The frescoes have been the subject of much misconception, partly
due to confusion about the villa's ownership. In 1945, E. H. Gombrich
doubted the connection between the villa and Vasari's mention of
Ghirlandaio's decoration of a Tornabuoni chapel "al Casso Maccherel-
li."24 Hence, Helen Ettlinger and others have claimed there was "no
conclusive proof' for Tornabuoni ownership.25 But the connection is
documented in an inventory of Tornabuoni property in 1498, which
listed "una chappelletta dipinta di nuovo" in the villa's grounds.26 In-
stead, following the brief comments of two earlier scholars, Ronald
Lightbown stated that Giovanni either bought the villa in 1469 or in-
herited it.27
21 Simons 1985, 1:169-175, and passim-, Simons 1987, 221-250; Cadogan 2000, 238. On
patronage rights in the chapel, see also Hatfield 1996.
22 Simons 1985, 1:170-171, 173-174. For the villa at Chiasso Macerelli, see also Carocci
1906-07, 2:224-225; Pedroli Bertoni and Prestipino Moscateli 1988 (for plans of the rele-
vant suite see 217, 231, 235).
23 Horne 1908, 142-143, gives a clear, detailed account.
24 Vasari 1906, 3:269; Gombrich 1945, 57, n. 1, repeated in Gombrich 1972, 218,
n. 163. The doubt was echoed in Chastel 1959, 172, n. 3.
25 Ettlinger 1976, 404. Doubt continues to be expressed, for example, by Pons 1989,
72; Pegazzano 2000, 2:1627; and Zöllner 2005, 225, 226. Giovanna is mistakenly seen in the
villa's portrait, and the building is said to have been owned by her uncle-in-law rather than her
father-in-law by J. G. Pollard in Scher 1994, 134, no. 46. Lorenzo's uncle is again the erro-
neous owner in Pollard 2007, 342-343. Citing yet adapting Simons 1985, 1:298-317, Pollard
sees Ginevra in the villa fresco but invents the idea that it is an "overpainted figure."
*> Pupilli 181, fol. 144r; Simons 1985, 1:171; Cadogan 2000, 287, no. 68.
27 Lightbown 1978, 2: 62, citing Carocci 1906-07 and Conti 1881 and 1882.
108

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Archival documents and architectural evidence clarify the situation.

Giovanni Tornabuoni's tax report of 1469-70 demonstrates that he was
indeed its owner by that date, but that it had not earlier been owned by
his family.28 More land was acquired in the area, and the extended
property was reported in the catasto of 1480-81. 29 Substantial building
is affirmed by architectural evidence, including the appearance of the
triangular Tornabuoni emblem on corbels.30 Giovanni's will of 26
March 1490 mentioned the "domo... al Chiasso Macerelli" in relation
to a room designated for his daughter Lodovica.31 In 1495 it was de-
scribed as a "casa da hoste e da lavoratore" or as a "domum magnum
sive palatium" with garden, dovecote, and other farms.32 After his
death in April 1497 and his son's execution later that year, the villa
was valued at 4,000 florins.33
Decoration in the villa from the later part of the fifteenth century
can thus be securely attributed to the auspices of Giovanni and Loren-
zo Tornabuoni. Given its position and painted condition, akin to the
nearby chapel "dipinta di nuovo" and indicative of the refurbishment
28 "Un podere posto nel piviere e popolo di Santto Stefano in Pane, luogho detto Chiasso
Maceregli, chon chasa da singnore e da lavoratore, il quale nel primo chatasto del 1427 era di
Giuliano... [sic: di Francesco] Ginori e dipoi si trasferi per Dominicho suo figluolo da Piero [di
Filippo] da Ghaglano... e dipoi dopo la morite di detto Piero la sua donna e rede e prochura-
tore si IT à venduta a Giovannj Tornabuoni sopradetto": Catasto 922, fol. 15 Ir; Simons 1985,
1:170, 2:135-136; VAN der Smán 2007, 180, nn. 7-8. Giuliano di Francesco Ginori's return of
1427 confirms this provenance (Catasto 78, fol. 164r), as does that of Filippo da Gagliano in
1469-70 (Catasto 925, fol. 370v). Rtoolfi 1890, 442, n. 1, dated the transfer from Ginori to da
Gagliano at 1451.
29 "Uno podere posto nel popolo e piviere di Sant Stefano in Pane, luogho detto Chiasso
a Mascierelli, con chasa da signiore e lavoratori confinato da prima via e secondo Lorenzo de'
Medici e 3. Tomaso Lottieri, e più tre pezzi di terra con suo vochaboli e confini apresso a detto
podere e sopra dettj confini tiello a mezzo Ciancho di Maso e Giannino e Piero suo figliuolo":
Monte Comune o delle Graticole, Copie del Catasto dell'Archivio del Monte, 1427-1480 (he-
reafter Copia di Catasto) 73, fol. 430r, published in part by Horné 1908, 142, 353.
30 Pedroli Bertoni and Prestipino Moscateli 1988, Fig. 99 (misdated). For the device,
see note 68 below.
31 NA 5675, fol. 49v, published in Cadogan 2000, 371. For the "chamera della lodovi-
cha" and its anticamera , see Pupilli 181, fol. 143 r.
32 The legal donation of his estate to his grandsons in January 1495 (NA 1924, insert 1,
fols. 281r-87v) and his tax return submitted that year, Decima Repubblicana 25, fol. 605r.
33 Pupilli 181, fols. 141r-44r; CS, Ser. II, 124, fol. 76v ("El Chiasso cho' 3 poderi"). Gio-
vanni's funeral was on 17 April, his onoranza on 19 April: Corporazioni Religiose Soppressi dal
Governo Francese (hereafter Soppressi) 102, App. 19, fol. 124r and App. 86, fol. 53r. For fi-
nancial reasons, Giovanni's great grandson Lionetto was forced to sell "una possessione nomi-
nata El Chiasso" in 1541: Carocci 1906-07, 1:225; Pampaloni 1968, 362, n. 68.
109

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PATRICIA SIMONS
and construction occurring at the site during the 1480s and 1490s, the
room frescoed by Botticelli is surely the "chamera nuova di sopra" ex-
amined in the inventory begun on 4 January 1498.34 The only other
room specifically placed on the upper floor was the bedroom or "cha-
mera di Lorenzo di sopra," which adjoined this "new" room by way of
an anticamera , and that arrangement is still evident today. Botticelli's
frescoes embellished the room closest to the main stairs, and hence it
was the more appropriate, semi-public area for entertainment and re-
laxation.
Perhaps the new set of rooms, typical of nuptial suites, was built in
time for the arrival of Lorenzo's first spouse Giovanna di Maso degli
Albizzi (1468-1488) in the autumn of 1486, which is the occasion
usually associated with Botticelli's frescoes. More likely, however, it
was ready for his second wife Ginevra di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi
(1473-1542 or later), wed in 1491. 35 Lorenzo's earlier wedding in
1486 was instead the occasion for the decoration of a sumptuous suite
in the family's city palace.36 The evidence reconfirms the traditional yet
sometimes questioned association of the frescoes with Lorenzo Torna-
buoni and his wife, but it does not prove a connection with Giovanna
or provide a certain date.37
Dissention has also arisen because it is, amazingly, often not recog-
nized that the woman portrayed by Botticelli (Fig. 3) is not identical
with Giovanna as portrayed by Ghirlandaio in Santa Maria Novella
and in the Madrid panel (Figs. 1-2). 38 The strange claim for resem-
blance between the female face in the villa and Giovanna's two por-
traits continues to be made, for instance, by Josef Schmid in 2002
34 See Pupilli 181, fols. 143v-44r for the rooms and their decoration. I thank Patricia Ru-
bin, with whom I visited the Tornabuoni villa in June 1987. Some scholars date the inventory to
25 September 1497, but that is when the file was opened and the children listed; the actual
inventory took place several months later.
35 Ammirato 1615, 42, dated the Tornabuoni- Albizzi wedding to 15 June 1486, hence
long repeated. But celebrations took place in September and some of the dowry was paid in
October 1486: VAN DER Sman 2007, 162-163, 181, nn. 19-20 (payments by her father in July
through September); Cecchi 2008, 280, n. 115 (the dowry). For Ginevra's marriage, see below.
36 Pupilli 181, fol. 148r; Kress 2003, 245-285; Bayer 2008, 303-306, no. 140.
37 Cf. van der Sman 2007, 162; van der Sman 2009, 57-58; van der Sman 2010b, 48.
38 Citing no literature on Ghirlandaio, Körner 2006, 248, 396, n. 5 63 regards Botticelli's
female figure as Giovanna, dismissing as implausible the observation in Pope-Hennessy 1966,
217, that the villa woman follows Giovanna in the chapel but remains unidentified. Some Bot-
ticelli scholars note the difference, but go no further than saying he did not portray Giovanna,
or they accept Ettlingens undocumented claim (1976).
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and Gert Jan van der Sman several times between 2007 and 2010. 39 In
stead, the woman in the villa, with strikingly individualized features,
clearly the younger of the two women who immediately follow Giovan
na in Ghirlandaio's Visitation (Fig. 2). It is implausible to believe th
Giovanna is a recognizable portrait in the fresco, but that the distinc
tive face behind her is only a generic idealization.
In 1897 it occurred to Ulrich Thieme that the woman portrayed b
Botticelli was, in fact, Lorenzo's second wife, but he rejected the notio
because of the presumed marriage of Ginevra in 1494, a date consi
ered too late on stylistic grounds.40 However, we now know that she
was considered marriageable in mid- 1489, had consummated her mar
riage with Lorenzo by October 1491, and bore a son in Septembe
1492. 41 Later scholars have rarely taken up the case for Ginevra, bu
evidence published here for the first time in full strongly points
her representation at the villa.42
The mistaken identification goes back to the time of the sale of Bot
ticelli's frescoes. In 1881-82, Cosimo Conti and then Charles Ephru
proposed that Botticelli portrayed Giovanna in a fresco commemorat
ing her marriage in 1486, citing Scipione Ammirato's sixteenth-centur
description of the spectacular wedding festivities that has long prede
termined the focus on the union as an exceptional one.43 While t
39 Schmid 2002, 127-128 (pointing to stylistic differences to explain "die unübersehba

Diskrepanz"); van der Sman 2007, 162, 179, n. 2; van der Sman 2009, 58 (caption), 189, n.
van der Sman 2010b, 57 (caption), 176, n. 63 (also denying a resemblance, and stressing th
idealized, stylized nature of the villa portrait). Van der Sman 2010a, 100 (captions), 269, 27
292, takes for granted that Botticelli depicted Giovanna in 1486-87. These authors insist t
the woman portrayed in the villa does not in any way resemble the person standing behind G
vanna in the Visitation but is instead Giovanna herself.
40 Thieme 1897-98, 192-200.
41 Her dowry was collected on 13 October 1491 by Lorenzo, who is named as her hus
band so the marriage had been consummated: NA 10886 (formerly G826), fol. 145 r- v; H
field 2009, 34, n. 142 (quoting Monte Comune o della Graticola 3744, Libro Nero Prim
fol. 155r). Ginevra's dowry matured on 6 July 1489, so she would have been on the marri
market since the spring or summer of 1489 (her birth date of 4 April 1473 is recorded in
Monte document). Ginevra's first child, Leonardo, was born on 29 September 1492: Tratt
Libro dell'Età 443 bis, fol. 146v. She later bore two daughters, Francesca (born in 149
and Giovanna (1496): Pupilli 181, fol. 141r. She was still alive, inhabiting the Tornabuoni
lace, in November 1542: van der Sman 2010b, 194, n. 200.
42 On the basis of Simons 1985, 1:171-173, 2:136-239, nn. 75-79, her presence at the vi
was supported by Fahy 2008, 25, 26, n. 35.
43 Ammirato 1615, 42; Conti 1881 and 1882; Ephrussi 1882, esp. 478-479 (a reprodu
tion of a detail from the Visitation in fact showed the young woman behind Giovanna). A
111

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PATRICIA SIMONS
nuptials of the Florentine elite varied in particular details and expendi-

tures, and perhaps grew more lavish as the century progressed, much
of the overall scheme of the Tornabuoni-Albizzi celebrations follows
the cultural norms of their peers, documented by the groom's father
in the case of festivities for the marriage of Bernardo Rucellai and Nan-
nina de' Medici in 1466.44
In the decades following the discovery of Botticelli's frescoes and
their first association with the Tornabuoni wedding of 1486, essays
by Frances Sitwell, Enrico Ridolfi, Maurice Paléologue, and Thieme
brought Ghirlandaio's panel portrait of Giovanna into the discussion,
but not all acknowledged the difference between this panel and the
face in the villa fresco.45 Herbert Home characteristically gathered all
the then-known evidence in 1908 but still showed confusion, rare for
him, calling the Louvre woman at one stage "Lucrezia Tornabuoni."
He cited Giovanna's medal (Fig. 7), the profile panel (Fig. 1), and
the fresco in Santa Maria Novella (Fig. 2), then said that Botticelli's
"Giovanna is represented almost as in Ghirlandaio's fresco," leaving
it unclear, however, which of the two women in the Visitation he
meant.46 Gombrich later recognized the visual confusion but found
no solution, simply saying that the Tornabuoni-Albizzi identifications
were "most unlikely."47
In 1976, Etdinger added to the skepticism by proposing a different
marriage as the occasion commemorated by Botticelli, a claim still re-
iterated by many scholars and in the Louvre's label for the fresco.48 Un-
mirato's description is presumably drawn from Naldo N aldi' s epithalamium, discussed in VAN
der Sman 2007, 174-179; van der Sman 2009, 39, 44-51, 60-61, 87; van der Sman 2010a, 269,
292-293; van der Sman 2010b, 31-32, 35, 37, 41-42, 51, 60, 66.
44 Perosa 1960, 28-34.
45 Sitwell 1889, 9 (acknowledging the difference but still seeing Giovanna in the me-
dal, the panel, and the frescoes of both the chapel and the villa); Ridolfi 1890, 439-452 (cit-
ing the same material as Sitwell but not noting a difference); Paléologue 1897, 493-497 (not
noting a difference); Thieme 1897-98, 192-200, observing a difference, as did Mesnil 1938,
100-102.
46 Horne 1908, 144, 147-148. About the same time, Gerald S. Davies (1908, 118) ex-
plicitly saw Giovanna as the leading lady in the Visitation but was puzzled by the discrepancy
with the face in the villa.
47 Gombrich 1972, 75-76.
48 Ettlinger 1976, 404-406; briefly reported in Ettlinger and Ettlinger 1976, DO-
DI; accepted by, among others, Pons 1989, 72-73; Martin 1996, 119 and caption to Fig. 2;
Acidini Luchinat 2001, 17; Zöllner 2005, 120-124, 225-226. The label was observed in
the Louvre on 23 August 2010.
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fortunately, she used Pompeo Litta's unreliable genealogical charts,

which omit, for instance, Giovanni Tornabuoni's daughter Lodovica,
and she was not aware of the inventory that identified the room as Lo-
renzo's.49 Hence, she quickly concluded that the "only other" possible
Tornabuoni-Albizzi conjunction was the one Litta claimed to have oc
curred by 1485 between Matteo d'Andrea degli Albizzi and Nanna d
Niccolò Tornabuoni. Her only corroborating evidence is a vague refer-
ence by Ammirato to events in 1530, by which time a Matteo degli Al-
bizzi was married to a woman simply "de Tornabuoni."50 Niccolò Tor-
nabuoni's catasto report of 1470 lists Nanna, the youngest daughter
aged five. Born in about 1464-65, she reappears in her father's declara-
tion of 1480-81, unmarried and unlikely to be, for she had no dowry.51
Ettlinger believed the villa frescoes referred to a marriage, because
she thought that one coat of arms there was impaled. The dexter side
was perhaps blank, while the sinister half, just discernible today,
showed the Albizzi arms (sable, two annulets concentric or) on th
rightmost edge of the fresco portraying the man (Figs. 5-6). 52 Yet, as
she acknowledged, this need not mean that he was an Albizzi, since Re-
naissance heraldic protocol was variable. A more fundamental objec
tion is that impaled arms need not imply a current marriage. The
stained glass in Lorenzo's Cestello chapel contains a shield impaled
with the Tornabuoni and Albizzi arms, although negotiations for hi
second marriage were virtually complete at the time.53 Another instance
of the Albizzi arms being used as a memorial occurs in two bronz
plates found at this very villa in 1498, which contained the coats of
arms of both of Lorenzo's wives, an armorial version of the pairing seen
49 Litta 1836, s.v. Tornabuoni, pls. I and II.

50 Ettlinger 1976, 406 and n. 18, citing Ammirato 1615, 27.
51 Catasto 922, fol. 15 lv; Copia di Catasto 74, fol. 165v. In 1470 he had two sons and five
daughters (Litta gives two: Cassandra and Alessandra): Francesco (aged 21), Nofri (16)
Gismonda (12), Madalena (11), Pippa (10), Criosa (7), and Nanna (5). In 1480-81 Pippa had
a dowry of 800 florins in the Monte, but Criosa, Nanna, and Francesca (aged 9) were all "sanz
dota."
52 Ettlinger 1976, 406 (no one else refers to the arme as impaled, however). The place-
ment of the Albizzi arms is sometimes misunderstood and located close to the female figure, for
example, in Pons 1989, 73, no. 65B.
53 Luchs 1977, 43, 45, 116, 119, n. 3 , 284, Figs. 84a-b. The altarpiece (Ghirlandaio's
Visitation now in the Louvre) and window were in place on 21 July 1491. Ginevra Gianfigliaz
zi's dowry was collected on 13 October 1491 (note 41). Capitals and other stone elements of
the Cestello chapel exhibit the Tornabuoni and Albizzi coats of arms and the Tornabuoni dia-
mond device: Luchs 1977, 21, 44, 45, 159-160, n. 12, Figs. 17a, 61-63.
113
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PATRICIA SIMONS
in Ghirlandaio's Visitation ,54 Moreover, as Hörne observed more than

a century ago, the mere shadow of the concentric circles of the Albizzi
that remain visible may only indicate "the first sketch for a part of the
design which was afterwards altered."55 Or, perhaps it was at some
point overpainted a secco with fragile pigment that has since disap-
peared. The visual evidence accords with the scenario proposed here
of a second wife.
Home's description of the frescoes in situ offers valuable yet ne-
glected evidence.56 Contrary perhaps to our expectation, the fresco
with the man was to our right of the window, the woman to our left,
so that both figures have their backs to the window and hence to each
other (Fig. 6). Therefore, the shield showing the Albizzi arms was on
the side furthest from the female portrait. A putto standing between
her portrait and the window displayed her escutcheon, flanked on
the other side of the window by a small boy once holding a shield be-
low Lorenzo. In other words, the Albizzi arms were not visually asso-
ciated with the woman, nor were they the man's chief insignia. Further-
more, no one has previously observed that a remnant of gold ground is
evident in the woman's heraldry (with the hint of a dark lion ram-
pant?), held by a putto in golden garb with azurite wings, and the
Gianfigliazzi armorial bearings displayed these very colors, a blue lion
against a gold ground (Dante, Inferno , 17. 59-60).
In 1978, Lightbown's extensive study of Botticelli claimed that the
identification of the leading woman in Santa Maria Novella as Giovan-
na was too weak, and that she was instead depicted in the villa fresco.57
However, Giovanna's presence in the chapel is irrefutable. Several
years after her death, on 7 October 1488, Giovanni Tornabuoni's wil
planned her entombment in the chapel at Santa Maria Novella, pro-
vided for anniversary masses, and stipulated the placement of her arms
(and perhaps portrait) on embroidery for the chapel, so that she, and
54 "2 bacini d'ottone con più lavoro chon issmalto e con l'arme di chase Albizzi e Gian-
figliazzi": Pupilli 181, fol. 14 lv. Giovanni's anteroom in the town palace contained "una mi-
sciroba chon l'arme di chasa e dagli Albizi": fol. 149v; for Albizzi arms on a Tornabuoni em-
broidery, see NA 5675, fols. 47v-48r, published in Cadogan 2000, 370.
ss HORNÉ 1908, 147.
56 Horné 1908, 145-147.
57 Lightbown 1978, 1:93-97, 2:60-63. The leading woman in the Visitation was first
identified as Giovanna by SlTWELL (1989) then Ridolfi (1890). Lightbown did not suggest
who she was if not Giovanna.
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the dynastic alliance sealed by her marriage, would be eternally comm

morated among the family of his grandson and her son Giovanni (bo
11 October 1487). 58 The only other women honored by masses we
the living daughter Lodovica (via masses for St. Louis), Giovanni s
nior's dead wife Francesca Pitti, and his deceased mother Nanna Guic-
ciardini.59 His will of March 1490 envisaged four marble tomb slabs
the chapel: for himself, his wife, his father and mother, and Giovanna.
She was buried in Santa Maria Novella and honored with a "messa can
tata" both then and on the first anniversary of her death. The latter
event of October 1489 occurred "nella cappella," as did a mass
1491, which probably means celebration near her portrayal.61
Adjacent to the Visitation , and painted immediately beforehan
the scene showing the Annunciation to Zacharias carries an inscriptio
with the date 1490, and Luca Landucci's diary recorded the chapel
unveiling on 22 December of that year, Giovanni's sixty-second birth
day.62 By then Giovanna had been dead more than two years, but Ghir
landaio used the profile panel inscribed with her death year 1488 for
the fresco. He took meticulous care when painting the panel portrait
modifying details such as lowering the arm and hands, shifting from
a beaded necklace to the delicate black cord, modifying the hair stylin
lessening the body's curvature, and rendering the final portrait mor
idealized than in the underdrawing (Fig. I).63 Pentimenti and changes
prove that the panel was not a mere copy, and thus it was produc
before the fresco, within a year or so after her death, perhaps in th
winter months when fresco work was not possible.64
58 The embroidered palio was to include the coat of arms of Giovanni's dead wife Fran
cesca Pitti, too: NA 5675, fols. 47v-48r, published in Cadogan 2000, 370. Luchs 1977, 1
n. 16 quotes the Grascia record of Giovanna's death. Her funeral and "messa cantata" at San
Maria Novella used a generous 52 lbs of wax: Soppressi 102, App. 84, fol. 40r. Her son's bir
is recorded in Tratte 444 bis, fol. 162r.
59 On the masses, see Simons 1985, 1:139-143, 2:116-18, nn. 183, 191-197.
60 NA 5675, fol. 48v; Cadogan 2000, 370. Giovanni was indeed buried in the chape
Simons 1985, 1:214-215.
61 Simons 1985, 1:143, 2:118, nn. 195-197. From Christmas 1490 or 1491 masses for he
were offered in the Cestello chapel instead.
62 Cadogan 2000, 236; Landucci 1883, 60. For the order of painting, see the diagram
of giornate in Ruffa 1990, 58, Figs. 6-7; Cadogan 2000, 241.
63 Sedano Espín et al. 2010, 331-338.
64 Sedano Espín et al. 2010, 333-334, who are surprisingly cautious about the order o
execution between panel and fresco, though the authors rightly stress the changes and say th
the ultimate source was very probably her medal.
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PATRICIA SIMONS
John Pope-Hennessy's influential but specious belief in the prece-

dence of the fresco and the date of circa 1490 for the panel portrai
was based on the fact that in the panel "the left hand is severed through
the knuckles and that the handkerchief held in it has been abbre-
viated."65 This assumes that the skilled, mature artist was unable to
do more than slavishly copy his own work when mis-placing a cartoon
drawn from the fresco upon the panel. Rather, the giornata in the Vis-
itation follow an outline determined by the panel, whereas abundant
technical evidence shows alteration and evolution on the panel's sur-
face as the artist finessed details.66 Once Ghirlandaio decided to lower
the hands in the panel painting, incisions and the border of reddish
brown paint inevitably had Giovanna's hand pass behind the picture
plane, effectively disengaged from the viewer's space as befits the pro-
file portrait of a dead woman.67
In both the panel and the fresco painting, Giovanna degli Albizzi
holds a handkerchief and wears the same jewel and costume, including
a variation on the Tornabuoni device of a triangular diamond with
flames and an L (for Lorenzo) brocaded on her shoulder.68 The panel,
the fresco, and the medal of Giovanna each show the same face and
hairstyle, and the medal probably served as Ghirlandaio's model for
his posthumous portrayal of her in profile (Figs. 1-2, 7). 69
The panel's inscription, adapted from Martial (10. 32), laments art's
inability to capture the figure's character and soul, especially appropri-
65 Pope-Hennessy 1966, 28 and oft repeated, for example in Brown 2001, 190; Luke
Syson in Campbell et al. 2008, 151; van der Sman 2010a, 270, 279, 289.
66 For the giornata see Ruffa 1990, 58, Fig. 6.
67 Similarly, the Man of Sorrows painted by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s has Christ's right hand
reaching forward yet partly truncated by a fictive border of red paint: van der Sman 2010a, 327,
no. 55. Another purpose of the brown border in Giovanna's portrait may have been to prevent
cropping by the framer: Sedano Espín et al 2010, 337. A brown border also surrounds Ghirlan-
daio's Magi tondo for the Tornabuoni and Michelangelo's Torment of St Anthony, c. 1487-88.
68 First pointed out in Simons 1985, 1:145, then Simons 1988, 13. Among other loca-
tions, the triangular or diamond emblem (usually with flames) occurs at the Cestello chapel;
throughout the frescoed borders, glass, and intarsia at Santa Maria Novella; on corbels in
the vüla and capitals in the city palace; and on one version of Giovanni's medal (Hill 1930,
no. 1023). According to the surviving drawing, it was also planned for Zacharias's vestment
and the dome in the Annunciation to Zacharias , though the details are now barely discernible
in the fresco. For the drawing, see Cadogan 2000, 131, 305-306, no. 112. On the device, see
Simons 1985, 1:145, 229, 259, 2:212-213, n. 94; De Prano 2010, 16-17.
69 For various versions of the medal see Hill 1930, nos. 1021-1022; Pollard 1984, 452-
456, nos. 253-254; Eleonora Luciano in Brown 2001, 130-132, no. 11; Syson in Campbell et
al. 2008, 148-151, no. 33; van der Sman 2010a, 288-289, 298-299, nos. 19, 29.
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ate for a dead woman represented in profile, eternally static within an

enclosed realm.70 Finally, the portrait's Tornabuoni origin is documen-
ted, as the "chamera del palcho d'oro" next to Lorenzo's room in the
palace still contained a special memento nearly a decade after Giovan-
na's death: "uno quadro chon chornicione messo d'oro chon testa e
busto della Giovanna degli Albizi."71 What follows is that the strikingly
dissimilar woman portrayed in the villa cannot be Giovanna. Nor does
the presence of Albizzi arms in the villa necessitate an Albizzi portrait
there, for those arms commemorate the dead Giovanna, just as the Al-
bizzi heraldry does in the chapel founded by Lorenzo at Cestello to be
her memorial chapel and decorated after her death.
But the woman portrayed by Botticelli definitely had some connec-
tion with the Tornabuoni, because she occurs in both their chapel and
their villa (Figs. 2-3). That the association is particularly related to Lo-
renzo can be deduced from the frescoed room's connection with the
"chamera di Lorenzo di sopra." Thus, Rab Hatfield's recent suggestion
that Botticelli portrayed Lorenzo's brother-in-law Alessandro di Fran-
cesco Nasi is not persuasive.72 He agrees with my proposal in an un
published paper that Ginevra is the female figure in the room, yet it
is highly unlikely that the decoration in Lorenzo's suite would show
his wife portrayed rather indecorously with his brother-in-law rather
than with his own portrait. Nor can one think of another case in which
paired male and female portraits are of in-laws (from different families
rather than siblings or spouses. And his suggestion does not accoun
for the presence of the Albizzi coat of arms. Further, the figure he iden
tifies as Nasi, the man holding gloves second from the left at the left
side of the Expulsion of Joachim (Fig. 8), is probably Piero de' Medici,
Lorenzo's first cousin once removed.73 Any similarity with the villa por-
trait would thus be due to familial resemblance.
70 The adaptation is probably by Lorenzo's teacher Poliziano: Simons 1985, 1:143, 2:118,
n. 199; Shearman 1992, 108-112. Poliziano also wrote an epigram for her tomb: Polizian
1867, 154-155; Maïer 1965, 194, n. 2, 244, 292. Although most of the evidence points to Po-
liziano, Lorenzo Tornabuoni may have played a role in adapting the inscription: De Pran
2008b, 617-641.
71 Pupilli 181, fol. 148r.
72 Hatfield 2009, 21-22, earlier reported by Musacchio 2008, 29-32.
73 Lauts 1943, 53, no. 58; Anrep-Bjurling 1980, 281, 290; Schmid 2002, 111. If this is
true, then Hatfield's idea that Ghirlandaio portrayed in-laws holding handkerchiefs or gloves
repeated by Musacchio (note 72), is unlikely. On the cloth (mappa) signifying status or purifi
cation (at various rites, including nuptials), see Partridge and Starn 1980, 55-56, 61-62.
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PATRICIA SIMONS
Hatfield's doubt about Lorenzo's portrayal is not new, but in all

cases the crucial documentation linking Lorenzo to his "new" set of
rooms in his family's villa has been unknown or neglected. Three
other identifications have been suggested for Botticelli's male figure.
In passing and with no evidence, it was occasionally said to be Gio-
vanni Pico della Mirandola.74 A few scholars have mentioned Loren-
zo's brother Antonio.75 But that illegitimate son, probably born in
Rome, barely features in the family records. Although he was bein
educated with his brother in 1479, he is not listed in his father's
tax report of 1480-81, and he probably resided in Rome.76 His father's
will of March 1490 committed both Antonio and his anonymous
mother to Lorenzo's care but did not mention a wife or children.77
Also not aware of the inventory or the arms, Gombrich brought in
a fourth man, claiming that the portrait on Lorenzo's medal (Fig. 9
was not "close enough" to that in the villa fresco (Fig. 5) and that
it looked "at least as much like" Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici
but that in fact "both are types of elegant young men rather than clo-
sely observed portraits."78
Notwithstanding Gombrich's astute discernment of the typological
nature of male portrayal among youths of the Medicean circle (which
applies also to Pico's medal), the face agrees well enough with Loren
zo's more youthful visage on his medal and in a Roman fresco of about
1482. 79 In Ghirlandaio's Calling of Peter and Andrew in the Sistine
Chapel, Lorenzo was portrayed in fashionable costume and confidently
74 Lee 1882, 163, 164; Mesnil 1938, 103; dismissed already by Conti 1882, 60. Pico's
medal reverse of the Graces and his hairstyle seem to have given rise to this suggestion, along
with an urge to associate Botticelli's paintings with Neoplatonism and the Medici circle.
75 TfflEME 1897-98, 192-200. Lauts 1943, 53, no. 74, suggested that the woman in the
villa and the chapel is Antonio's wife, and hence this is repeated in Anrep-Bjurling 1980
284-285. Antonio may be portrayed in the Sistine chapel (note 80 below).
7* Ross 1910, 218, 224-225; Simons 1985, 1:130-131, 145, 2:108-109, nn. 135-137.
77 NA 5675, fol. 49v, published in Cadogan 2000, 371.
7* Gombrich 1972, 75-76.
79 Lorenzo's medal, Hill 1930, no. 1068, would seem to be ca. 1485, judging by his
young age (he was born on 10 August 1468: Tratte, Libro dell'Età 443 bis, fol. 146r); on
the medal see also Campbell et al. 2008, 148-151, no. 34; van der Sman 2010a, 298, no
28. Similarly, his sister Lodovica appears much younger in her medal than she is at the head
of the entourage in the Birth of the Virgin by Ghirlandaio: Hill 1930, no. 1069; Luciano in
Brown 2001, 127-129, no. 10; van der Sman 2010a, 286-287, no. 17. One version of Lodo-
vica's medal contains the inscription AN. Villi and, since she was born on 1 Oct. 1476 (Monte
Comune o della Graticola 3744, fol. 281r), it was cast in 1485-86.
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holding hand on hip, engaging the spectator with a direct gaze.80 Th

face on the medal has something of the same chubby ingenuous appe
and similar features. Lorenzo is also very probably the rightmost wit
ness kneeling in profile in Ghirlandaio's large tondo of the Adoration
of the Magi dated 1487, inventoried in the family palace.81 Several yea
later Ghirlandaio portrayed him prominently at the head of a group o
the left of the chapel's Expulsion of Joachim (Fig. 8). 82 Guicciardini
"noble and gracious youth" nevertheless adopts a stance that also
speaks to character traits observed by his enemies: haughty, supreme
aware of his powerful connections and riches, never ceding to anyone.
The luxuriant hair rounded at the back, large flared nose, indent
chin, and finely arched eyebrows are similar in all these representation
although the face in the chapel turns outward and is especially ide
lized.
Most scholars have rightly believed that Lorenzo is portrayed in the
villa purely on the basis of comparison with his medal, and further rea-
sons adduced above secure the identification. Turning to his compa-
nion, I argue that the only plausible female candidate for visual inti-
macy with both Lorenzo in the villa and Giovanna in the chapel is
the second wife Ginevra.84 By means of heraldry at the villa and por-
traiture in the chapel, Giovanna is visually approving of her successor
and visibly respected as a virtuous model (Fig. 2). Contiguous to, but
literally ahead of, the second wife, this much-remembered first wife
is shown as a worthy exemplar, granted a position of honor in the cha-
pel intended for her burial and still deserving representation there after
80 Cadogan 2000, 225 and pl. 83.

81 For the tondo and a variant, see Simons 1985, 2:110, n. 144, 139, n. 81; Cadogan
2000, 256, 258. Three or four other faces in the tondo (some of whom might be godparents?)
recur in the chapel's Annunciation to Zacharias , despite the claim that "no portraits have ever
been found with which to identify" the figures, in VAN DER Sm AN 2010a, 297.
82 Manni 1746, 18:131, was the first to place Lorenzo in the chapel, followed by Follini
1795, 6:323, who used the same now lost source of 1561, but in more detail, and situated Lo-
renzo in the Joachim scene. General consensus since has agreed, if specifying his position see-
ing him as the innermost figure of the left-hand group.
83 Parenti 1994-2005, 2:122 ("Lorenzo Tornabuoni superbissimo si giudicava, e sendo
di danari e parentado caldo, cedere ad alcuno non volea").
84 No medal of Ginevra Gianfigliazzi is listed in Hill 1930. I first proposed this identi-
fication in 1985 (note 42), and hence friends or associates with a copy of that work have some-
times relayed the information. See, for example, Cadogan 2000, 241-243; Kent 2001, 40 (dis-
missed as wrong, but with no reasons given, by van der Sman 2007, 180, n. 3); Frick 2002,
298, n. 37; and see Fahy 2008, 26, n. 35 for Patricia Rubin.
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PATRICIA SIMONS
her demise. A future wife rather meekly stands in her shadow, and in
each case valuable oligarchic alliances are publicly displayed by the
portrayal of in-laws.85
While it can be hazardous to compare two faces by different artists,
the very close similarity - in viewing angle, facial features, hair, shaved
forehead, scalp, jewelry, and veil - between the two versions of Ginevra
indicates that one depends upon the other. Despite surface losses in
each fresco, the hair styling and individual wisps of curling hair ar
more detailed in the chapel, as are the bags under her eyes and slight
differences between the eyelids. Appropriately somber when following
her dead predecessor in the chapel, the new bride has a fresher, livelier,
more idealized, and self-possessed mien when painted by Botticelli in
the villa. As with Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna in the Visitation ,
it is probable that Botticelli, too, resorted to a previously produced
drawing or painting as the model for Ginevra's face.
Since the Visitation was painted in 1490, Botticelli's work in the vil-
la is of about the same year or a litde later. According to the Dominican
chronicler Modesto Biliotti, writing in 1586, Botticelli designed em-
broidery that Giovanni Tornabuoni donated to the cappella maggior
of Santa Maria Novella as part of his campaign to make it his family
and funereal chapel.86 Giovanni's will drawn up in March 1490 noted
that the work on an embroidered cover for the crucifix had begun
which locates Botticelli's relationship with the family precisely about
the time of Lorenzo's second marriage.87
Other evidence also points to the later date for Botticelli's frescoes.
Lorenzo collected part of the Gianfigliazzi dowry on 13 October 1491,
but Ginevra was considered nubile from mid- 1489, not long after her
sixteenth birthday, when her dowry matured in July of that year. The
85 Far from a unique political move to ally the Albizzi with Medici relatives (still claimed
by Schmid 2002, 127, for instance), the marriage of Giovanna and Lorenzo was only one of
several marital alliances between the Tornabuoni, Medici, and Albizzi. For example, Giovanna
was the granddaughter of Lorenzo's aunt: Simons 1985, 1:123, 144, 2:103, n. 97, 119, n. 203,
hence Cadogan 2000, 278.
86 Biliotti 1895-96, 241. Without noting the patron, in 1568 Vasari named Botticelli as
the designer of the "fregio della croce che portano a processione i Frati di Santa Maria Novel
la": Vasari 1906, 3:323.
87 NA 5675, fol. 47v, published in Cadogan 2000, 370. The sewing nuns of Santa Ver-
diana were paid for the work in June 1495, suggesting that indeed the work was only starting in
1490 and that thus the design had been made recendy. For the payment see Soppressi 102,
Appendice, 19, fol. llOv (new numeration lOlOv).
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marriage was perhaps envisaged or close to finalization by Octobe

1490, when Lorenzo surrendered the remaining dowry due from t
Albizzi marriage.88 Van der Sman's objection that we have no evidenc
that she was engaged before the chapel frescoes were completed is th
considerably weakened.89 Many Florentine men remarried within a ye
or less of their wife's demise; Ginevra's own father Bongianni Gianfi
gliazzi married her mother Maddalena di Michele Parenti a month aft
his second wife died in 1470.90 No matter what bonds of affection ti
spouses during their lifetime, mourning was usually not prolonge
practical considerations such as a need for investment funds from
new dowry or for a household manager and female companion, dynas
tic propagation or political alliance, frequently outweighed person
sentiments about the departed mate. Whatever Lorenzo's feelings wer
for his first wife, he negotiated another engagement within two yea
and witnessed the prominent inclusion of the second spouse with
his villa suite and family chapel.
Ginevra's portrayal in the chapel occurred in 1490, when she w
probably a fiancée or very newly married, yet perhaps before consum
mation. For someone to be depicted in a family chapel when affiance
is not unusual; it proclaimed a prestigious, forthcoming alliance ( paren
tado ) and did not delay a busy workshop. Fiancés probably mingle wit
prospective in-laws in the Sassetti chapel completed by the Ghirlanda
shop immediately before it moved to Santa Maria Novella.91 In the late
chapel, Lodovica's future husband Alessandro Nasi appears in the E
pulsion of Joachim (Fig. 8), adjacent to the Birth of the Virgin contain
ing her portrait, although they were not married until 1492. 92 Ghirla
daio may have portrayed successive wives within the one family portr
88 NA 1924, insert 1, fol. 147r; and note 41 for Ginevra's dowry fund.
89 Van der Sman 2009, 189, n. 9; van der Sman 2010b, 176, n. 63.
90 I am grateful to Brenda Preyer for this information, drawn from Bongianni' s rico
danze , which she uses in Preyer 2004.
91 Borsook and Offerhaus 1981, 38-40; Hatfield 1978, 2:230-231.
92 On the basis of the now lost document of 1561, Alessandro's presence in the group
the left of the Expulsion was first indicated by Follini 1795, 323. The dowry is documented i
Monte Comune o della Graticola 3744, fol. 28 Ir and Alessandro was "marito" by 27 Augu
1492; NA 13888 (formerly M237), fols. 124r-26r (Feb. 1493); Hatfield 2009, 34, nn. 14
145. The marriage was arranged by Lorenzo de' Medici on 25 February 1489: Hatfie
2009, 22, 35, n. 147. Nasi witnessed the extension of Ghirlandaio's deadline for the complet
of the chapel's frescoes in April 1489: NA 4359 (formerly C186), insert 5, no. 8.
121

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PATRICIA SIMONS
at the beginning of his career when he decorated the Vespucci chapel

at Ognissanti.93
Like beds, chests, and other furnishings ordered in preparation for
an anticipated alliance, nuptial chambers could be decorated, usually
by the bridegroom, before the final act of marriage, which concluded
an often lengthy process.94 The "nuovo" rooms in the Tornabuoni villa
set aside for Lorenzo and his wife appear to be specially furnished and
decorated as just such a marriage suite. Botticelli's frescoes must be after
October 1488, when the first wife Giovanna died; at the latest, they are
close to or not long after Lorenzo's second marriage three years later.
Most authors date the villa frescoes to about the time of the Torna-
buoni- Albizzi wedding in 1486, relying on repeated references to Am-
mirato, whose second-hand description of the celebrations does no
mention the frescoes.95 When discovered in 1873 under whitewash
Botticelli's paintings were worn (and degraded further during their re-
moval), leading Giovanni Battista Cavalcaseli and Joseph Arche
Crowe to suggest in 1894 that some of that work may have been by as-
sistants and that all of it was rushed due to the imminent deadline of
the wedding of 1486, a point they reiterated from Ridolfi's historical
research about the family published in 1890.96 Later commentators oc
casionally specify that assistants executed the paintings, but damag
makes certainty on the matter impossible.97 Despite the frescoes' poor
condition, everyone discerns Botticelli's design, if not hand, and, I ar-
gue, a date of about 1490-91 is plausible.
Due to the seeming fixity of the date 1486, scholars have presumed
a relationship with Botticelli's narratives in the Sistine Chapel, which
were assessed in January 1482.98 But such a connection derives more
93 Brockhaus 1902, 103-104.

94 Klapisch-Zuber 1985, 220-222; Lydecker 1987, 145-147, 165-175, and passim.
95 Influenced by the misidentification of the female portrait, the dating of the villa fres-
coes according to the Tornabuoni- Albizzi wedding is virtually ubiquitous. See, for instance
Horne 1908, 142-143; Lightbown 1978, 1:93-97, 2:60-63; Bo and Mandel 1978, 92-93; Kör-
ner 2006, 246-249; Cecchi 2008, 236, 242. That the "style of the frescoes" supposedly canno
be as late as 1490-91 is one of three reasons why van der Sman denies the possibility of Ginev-
ra's portrayal in the villa (2009, 189, n. 9; 2010b, 176, n. 63).
96 Ridolfi 1890, 440-442; Cavalcaseli^ and Crowe 1886-1908, 6:261-262 (referring to
an offprint of Ridolfi's article).
97 For example, the frescoes are given to one or more assistants by Cecchi 2008, 86.
98 For example, Bo and Mandel 1978, no. 63; Ettlinger 1965, 17, 21, 28-30, 122-123;
Pons 1989, 72-73; Caneva 1990, 84-86, no. 41; Zöllner 2005, 226.
122

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from the common medium of fresco and the presence in both of youn
graceful women clothed in plentiful, loose drapes than it does fro
such matters as color, composition, or figure groupings (Fig. 4). T
mistaken identification of the female portrait has predetermined asses
ments of Botticelli's visual strategy.
The four personifications greeting Ginevra may "look like sisters of
the daughters of Jethro" painted in Rome, yet they are simpler, large
relatives, conceived with more breadth and monumentality." Deta
are less evident, their decorative place overtaken by the manipulation
of color, which was becoming "more individual than before [Rome
and more varied."100 Botticelli's increasing simplification of mass and
detail during the late 1480s is especially evident in his treatment
form and composition within the Liberal Arts fresco (Fig. 5). Figures
are bent into geometric generalizations, subdued by forces workin
more toward a sense of group dynamics. The sloping shoulders an
elongated sweep of Philosophy seated on a raised dais and Geomet
to her immediate right, for instance, are close to that bravura manipu
lation of human form Botticelli imposes on the Virgin in the Cestello
Annunciation , commissioned after March 1489, or on the female fig
ures in his Santa Barnaba altarpiece, commonly dated to abou
1488. 101 Perhaps Botticelli's "virile air" [aria virile), singled out by a
anonymous Milanese contemporary at about this time, was precise
evoked by the vigor of his colors and increasingly broad conception.10
The identification of Lorenzo and his second wife Ginevra in the
villa has implications for the meaning of Tornabuoni portraiture. Th
deceptive appearance of individual detail in portraits (albeit misrecog
nized!) has exacerbated a widespread tendency to read portrayals
Giovanna in personal, romanticized terms. Hence, for instance, a boo
about her two-year marriage is subtitled, in Dutch, "beauty and de
tiny" ( schoonheid en noodlot ), changed in the recent English translati
to the similarly nostalgic phrase "timeless art and fleeting lives." 103 O
99 The quotation is from Ettlinger and Ettlinger 1976, 151.

100 Pattilo 1954, 212-215.
101 For the Cestello work, see esp. Luchs 1977, 71, 80-82, 179, n. 18, 255, 346, pl. 71. F
both works see Bo and Mandel 1978, nos. 94, 102; Lightbown 1978, 2:66-71.
102 Baxandall 1972, 25-27; also Horne 1908, 109-111, 353. For Jonathan Nelson's su
gestion that the phrase connoted a fully developed, adult, tempered, or restrained mode,
Zambrano and Nelson 2004, 391-395.
103 Van der Sman 2009; van der Sman 2010b.
123

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PATRICIA SIMONS
for another author, because the dead Giovanna is presumed to be de

picted in the villa, the paintings there represent "an ideal reunion of
bride and bridegroom in the realm of immortal virtue and beauty..
[and] demonstrate the deeply affecting power of images as well as
the strength of love itself."104 Yet the imagery of Venus and the Three
Graces, supposedly praising the virtuous essence of a particular wo-
man, the beloved and exemplary Giovanna, was clearly and quickly
transferable to the living Ginevra.105
While the reverse of one of Giovanna's medals showed Venus dis-
guised as armed Diana, her more common medal (issued several times)
represented the Graces, who also appeared on the medal of the huma-
nist Pico della Mirandola and were recycled for Poliziano's sister Ma
ria.106 Visual evidence does not support the claim that in Giovanna'
medal one or all three of the Graces "have features that resemble the
bride's," for these are generic faces.107 Nor were the Graces "a particu-
larly potent image for the Tornabuoni" alone.108 Upon the unexpected
death of Giovanna's sister Albiera (1457-1473), the flurry of poetic
mourning included Poliziano's Latin elegy noting that she was blessed
with the virtues of the Graces.109 Chaste Diana and voluptuous Venus
were alternative guises for Albiera, as they were on the reverse of some
of her sister's medals.110
A set of three paintings showing Jason and the Argonauts, finished
in 1487 for Lorenzo Tornabuoni's marital suite in the palace, was ac
companied by Bartolomeo di Giovanni's standing Apollo , with the Tor
104 Zöllner 1998, 101, 112, reiterated as a possibility in Zöllner 2005, 226.
105 Van der Sman 2009, 189, n. 9; van der Sman 2010b, 176, n. 63, instead offers the
circular argument that the nuptial themes of Naldo Naldi's poem for the Tornabuoni- Albizz
marriage of 1486 apply so well to Botticelli's frescoes that the images cannot relate to any othe
wedding.
1{* Hill 1930, nos. 998B, 1003; Wind 1967, 36-56, 68-80, Figs. 10-14, 69-70. For a re-
freshingly non-Neoplatonic reading of the reverses with Mercury and Three Graces, see De
Prano 2010, 18-22, and with a plausible emphasis on bridal virtues, De Prano 2008a.
107 Cf. Syson in Campbell et al. 2008, 148, reporting an opinion that goes back to Hill
1930, no. 1021. The Graces on Giovanna's reverse are less worn than those on the other medals
Hill reproduces.
108 Cf. Syson in Campbell et al. 2008, 151, n. 1.
109 "In Albieram Albitiam," lines 27-28, in Poliziano 1867, 239. Botticelli's Three
Graces in the Primavera are another case, probably marital, and unrelated to Tornabuoni pa-
tronage.
110 Poliziano 1867, 240, lines 33-36. The figure on the medal also recalls Poliziano's de-
scription of chaste Diana in his Stanze 1. 46.
124

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nabuoni escutcheon underneath, paired with Venus holding flowers in

her lap and having the Albizzi arms below.111 For the second marriag
in the villa's suite, Venus again presides over the wife's realm, thoug
the spouse is now Ginevra, while the groom's persona is implicitly th
of Mercury, an association earlier declared on the reverse of his m
dal.112
Poliziano was one of Lorenzo's teachers, much pleased with his
progress in Greek; he wrote an epitaph upon Giovanna's death and
was probably responsible for the adjustment to Martial's epigram
placed on her profile panel.113 Poliziano and other members of the late
fifteenth century circle of Medicean literati used mythological figures
when praising each other and the female partners or foils of their pri-
vileged coterie. Individual personalities are necessarily situated within
the cultural practices of their group, and a focus on biography alone
or emotionalism risks casting fifteenth-century Florentines in too mod-
ern a light. The poetic and visual praise endowed on elite women was
as conventional as it was sentimental, and as much political, dynastic,
and instrumental as it was personal, individual, or sincere.114 Although
Giovanna was exceptionally well regarded by her in-laws, modern as-
sumptions about personality and romance have contributed signifi-
cantly to the inability, literally, to see the second wife Ginevra.
In a similar vein, some authors assume that the jewelry exhibited in
women's portraits are prominent statements about a sitter's specific
character, whereas those scintillating items are vital elements in legible
cultural strategies. Female virtues associated with particular gems and
precious stones were part of the obligatory rhetoric of praise, but jew-
elry was also a means to display the wealth and honor of the lineage, as
well as the wearer.115 Jewels were family heirlooms, used by wives but
often returned to the patrimony, so they did not particularly distinguish
one woman's personality from another. Hence, a virtual physiognomy
of jewelry can be used to identify Tornabuoni women and wives, but
H' Fahy 1984, 1:233, Figs. 233-234; Campbell 2007; Bayer 2008, 303-306, no. 140; van
der Sman 2010a, 294-296, nos. 24-26.
112 For Mercury in the villa, see Zöllner 1998, 110.
113 Poliziano 1867, 72, 154-155, 333-335; SIMONS 1985, 1:176-77, 2:141-142; FAHY
1984, 233; note 70 above. Poliziano is among the humanists portrayed by Ghirlandaio in
the Annunciation to Zacharias.
114 For the poetic fiction of female portraiture, see Dempsey 1992, esp. 131-139.
115 Dal Poggetto 1977, including 337-341 for pearls; Randolph 1998, 182-200.
125

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PATRICIA SIMONS
not necessarily a particular woman. In the Birth of the Virgin, the re-
cently affianced but still virginal Lodovica Tornabuoni probably wears
what her father's testament of 1490 described among her lavish dowry
as a "crocettina."116 In her earlier medal, Lodovica displayed what may
be the bulky, round "crocettina" of pearls surrounding a crucifix, but
from it three pearls are suspended (Fig. 10).
At about the same time, the medal of her new sister-in-law Giovan-
na exhibited jewelry that was her signature ornament before it passed
on to the second wife Ginevra for display on public occasions, even
while it was actually part of Lodovica's dowry. The usual form of the
pendant, seen in the profile panel (Fig. 1), consists of a tripartite com-
position: a small diamond is set in gold at the top, below that is a large
ruby in a quatrefoil gold setting, and from it hang three large pearls.
Giovanni's testamentary list of his daughter's dowry succinctly de-
scribed it in 1490 as "a pendant with one ruby and one diamond
and three pearls."117 But in the medals, young Lodovica wears the
three pearls, while the bride Giovanna has a single, elongated gem or
pearl hanging below the first two elements. Although the parts were
somewhat interchangeable in visual representations and the small dia-
mond setting at the top was not always depicted, and the pendant
hangs from either a string of pearls or a plain black cord in various por-
traits, the elements are similar enough for the basic form to be recog-
nizable. It first appears in about 1485-86 in the medals, and in 1489-90
both Giovanna and Ginevra display it in their adjacent portraits within
the Visitation , and hence it had featured in Giovanna's profile panel
(1488-89) and later recurred in Ginevra's villa fresco (1490-91), before
it is carefully described in Giovanni's will of 1490 and then in further
documentation of Lodovica's dowry in 1493. 118 Initially, the pendant in
Giovanna's panel portrait (Fig. 1) was rather different, indicating that
at some point during production it was decided that she would be per-
petually endowed with the Tornabuoni asset.119
116 For the Tornabuoni jewelry, see NA 5675, fol. 49r, published in Cadogan 2000, 370-
371; Simons 1985, 1:135, 2:112, n. 163; Hatfield 2009, 33-34, n. 140. On the "crocettina," see
also Dal Poggetto 1977, 295, 340, nos. 187, 219 (where Lodovica's name and death date are
incorrect); Simons 1985, 1:139; Simons 1988, 9.
117 NA 5675, fol. 49r, published in Cadogan 2000, 370.
118 For Nasi's acknowledgment of Lodovica's dowry in February 1493, see Hatfield
2009, 34, n. 140.
119 Susana Pérez, "Radiographic Study," in van der Sman 2010a, 335.
126

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The association of the recognizable pendant with only three Torna

buoni women is an important factor in identifying a woman's portra
in yet another of Ghirlandaio's frescoes. The jewelry is prominent in
the Birth of the Baptist, worn by the leading visitor to Elizabeth's bir
chamber (Fig. 11). In passing, several authors have, therefore, deduce
that this visitor is again Giovanna degli Albizzi, an idea that can
shown to be highly probable, and for more than reasons of visual re-
semblance alone.120 Both Birth scenes feature a female entourage l
by a more richly dressed, younger woman who stands slightly apart.
Whereas Lodovica's profile in the Virgin's narrative is recognizabl
from her medal, however, the haunting face of the older patrici
equivalent in the Baptist's cycle on the opposite wall has eluded defin
tive identification. She looks out rather wistfully in a three-quart
pose, and a separate study for her dress indicates her importance,
does the portrait's location.121 The features of the female figure
the Birth of the Baptist - the bearing, chin, jawline, forehead, eyebrow
hairstyle, long neck, and rather meditative eye with a puffed socket
above and deep hollows below - are all seen in Giovanna's med
(Fig. 7).
No other young woman was likely to have been chosen for such
prominent portrayal in the chapel, and her presence in the birth scene
is especially likely. The mother of the newly born Giovanni, first and
eponymous grandson of the chapel's patron Giovanni Battista, wit-
nesses the birth of his and the city's patron saint Giovanni Battista.
The boy's birth is also celebrated by the insertion of a new scene at this
register, for the adjacent Naming of the Baptist had not been envisaged
in the painters' contract of September 1485. 122 Working back from the
inscribed date of 1490 in the register directly below and taking into ac-
count other work done in the chapel and elsewhere by Ghirlandaio, it
120 Staley 1909, xiv; Offerhaus 1976, 119-120 (and hence Schmid 2002, 130); Dal
Poggetto 1977, 296, no. 189 (but "Giovanna Tornabuoni" is also seen in the Birth of the Vir-
gin , 340). The following is drawn from Simons 1985, 1:311-314, 2:240-242, nn. 140-143 (hence
Hatfield 1996, 115, 117, n. 58). Despite the fact that a copy of Simons 1985 was hand deliv-
ered to him in winter 2005, van der Sman (in 2009, 196, n. 9, and 2010b, 183, n. 116) names
Offerhaus, Schmid, and Hatfield, but not Simons, when saying the identification is hypotheti-
cal.
121 For the drawing, see Cadogan 2000, 300, no. 98 (British Museum 1895, 0915. 451).
122 For various changes, all dating after November 1487, see Simons 1985, 1:312, 317;
Simons 1987, 233, 235 and n. 39. Ghirlandaio's Magi tondo dated 1487 very probably also
celebrates the birth: Simons 1985, 2:139, n. 81.
127

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PATRICIA SIMONS
is probable that the Birth was executed not only after the boy's birth in
October 1487 but also after the necessary seasonal break during win-
ter's cold and damp.
That the Birth was painted in the summer (of 1488) is suggested by
the fact that the fruits being delivered with enthusiasm by a classicizing
maiden on the far right - grapes, pomegranates, and probably peaches
- ripen in that season or early autumn, especially overlapping in Sep-
tember. Moreover, the female figure wears over her white dress a sum-
mer garment, a giornea or open-sided overgown, of light pink with
golden embroidery. Ghirlandaio may have painted the fruits and cloth-
ing at another time, perhaps the spring, but he chose to visualize the
celebration of a birth as though it were taking place in late summer
or early autumn, somewhat befitting Giovanni di Lorenzo's birthday
of 1 1 October. The visual congruence of seasonal details also conveys
the impression of eyewitness immediacy. The female figure's pose and
tired, puffy appearance imply that she is gravid, as Giovanna certainly
was when she died on 7 October 1488, according to Poliziano's com-
memorative epigram.123 Mother and pregnant again when depicted
alive but ill in the Birth, Giovanna later featured as a dead, commemo-
rated, and idealized wife in the Visitation below.124
Portrait identifications by way of visual comparison are difficult, be-
cause artistic license and variation are always involved. Botticelli clearly
idealized his figures but so, too, did Ghirlandaio, often considered the
paragon of realistic portrayal in Quattrocento Florence. The generaliza-
tion of features was exacerbated by the working process, which re-
quired at least one transfer from memory or a drawing rather than di-
rect observation. Ghirlandaio's ability to evoke a grander vision from
the particulars of a drawing is famously evident in the case of the el-
123 Poliziano 1867, 154-155, which notably grieves over a child "nondum nata," but
many modern writers erroneously say that she died in childbirth.
124 The delay between the painting of the two registers is explained by the backlog of
work implied when, on 7 April 1489, the Ghirlandaio brothers obtained an extension of their
deadline from May 1490 to March 1491: Cadogan 2000, 359-360, no. 33, which also notes
that most of the chapel's frescoes were done in 1488-90 (241). The large double-sided altar-
piece, the stained glass designs, and changes to the program of the frescoes had been added
to their workload since the initial contract, along with such Tornabuoni commissions as the
Magi tondo (1487) and Giovanna's profile portrait panel (1488-89). Perhaps the altarpiece
of the Visitation for Cestello (1491) had already been commissioned by the time of the exten-
sion, too. For at least eight works connecting the Tornabuoni with Ghirlandaio, see Simons
1987, 236. The summer of fresco production in 1489 was perhaps primarily focused on the
lowest register of Mary's cycle.
128

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Fig. 1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Giovanna degli Albizzi, 1488-49, tempera and oil on panel,
77 X 49 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

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Fig. 2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, de-
tail of Giovanna degli Albizzi (left)
and Ginevra Gianfigliazzi in The Vi-
sitation, 1490, fresco. Cappella Mag-
giore, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
Fig. 3. Ginevra Gianfigliazzi from
Fig. 4.

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Fig. 4. Sandro Botticelli, Ginevra Gianfigliazzi Welcomed by Venus and the Three
Graces y ca. 1490-91, fresco, 211 x283 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Fig. 5. Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo Tornahuoni Welcomed into the Realm of the Liberal
Arts , ca. 1490-91, fresco, 237 x269 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Fig. 6. Plan of Lorenzo's suite at Villa Tornabuoni (author). 1: "chamera nuova di sopra"; 2: anti-
camera; 3: "chamera di Lorenzo di sopra"; 4: Botticelli's Ginevra Gianfigliazzi Welcomed by Venus
and the Three Graces ; 5: Botticelli's Lorenzo Tornabuoni Welcomed into the Realm of the Liberal
Arts ; 6: Albizzi arme' 7: modern window, destroying part of Venus' s garden.
Fig. 7. Niccolo Fiorentino (attributed), Giovanna degli Albizzi (obverse) and Three Graces (re-
verse), 1485-86, cast bronze medal, 78 mm diameter. British Museum, London, G3,IP.3.

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Fig. 8. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of portraits at the left in The Expulsion of Joachim ,
1487-90, fresco. Cappella Maggiore, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
Fig. 9. Niccolo Fiorentino (attributed), Lorenzo Tornahuoni , obverse, ca. 1485, cast bronze
medal, 78 mm diameter. Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC,
1957.14.890.a.
Fig. 10. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of leading woman (here identified as Giovanna degli
Albizzi), in The Birth of St. John the Baptist , ca. 1488, fresco. Cappella Maggiore, Santa Maria
Novella, Florence.
Fig. 11. Niccolo Fiorentino (attributed), Lodovica Tornahuoni , obverse, ca. 1485, late cast,
bronze, 15 mm diameter. Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington
DC, 1957.14.891.a.

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derly man with a diseased nose, for whom both the graphic record
and the final painting survive.125 In the case of one surviving portrait
in the Tornabuoni chapel, for an older female attendant in the Birth o
the Virgin, Ghirlandaio moved from a now-lost sketch (perhaps in
metalpoint) to the finished (and surviving) drawing in black chalk,
which was then pricked for transfer onto a substitute cartoon tha
was used for the actual fresco, augmented by incisions into the plas
ter.126 He probably began his construction of the profile portraits of
Giovanna and her young sister-in-law Lodovica by referring to thei
medals, yet in each case the painted portrait presents a more refined,
mature, and dignified woman. Whichever mode was used for his var-
ious depictions of the Tornabuoni pendant, in that case too general-
ized idealization was the result. Whereas the pearls appear perfect
spheres in Giovanna's panel portrait (Fig. 1), the documentation o
Lodovica's dowry in 1493 noted that they were a little elongated
and one was slightly uneven.127 Similarly, Ghirlandaio refined Giovan-
na's features and body shape as he built up the layers of paint in that
profile portrait.
Michelangelo, who worked in the Tornabuoni chapel as an appren-
tice from 1487 for at least a year and probably more, famously opined
that naturalistic exactitude was unimportant in portraits because in a
thousand years "no one will be able to know that they were other-
wise."128 Although, indeed, we cannot be certain what they actually
looked like in every particular, in the case of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
and his successive wives Giovanna and Ginevra, we can be reasonably
sure about where, when, and why they were portrayed in late fifteenth
century Florence.
125 Cadogan 2000, 176, 276-277, no. 45, and 304, no. 109 for the drawing; Elena Greer
in Campbell et al. 2008, 244-247, no. 77.
126 On the drawing in Chatsworth and its use, see Bambach 1999, 37, 240-241, 287 (and
152, 258, 337, 344-346 and passim for broader comments on his working method with draw
ings in the chapel); Brown 2001, 200-201; Cadogan 2000, 144, 151, 291-292, no. 79.
127 The document is quoted in Hatfield 2009, 34, n. 140 ("tre perlle fine bianche ben
fatte; anno un pocho e' lungho et un pocho rognose").
128 Cadogan 1993, 30-31; for the quotation, Steinmann and Wittkower 1927, 241.
129
9

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PATRICIA SIMONS
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Portraits For The Tornabuoni Family by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli

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GIOVANNA AND GINEVRA: PORTRAITS FOR THE TORNABUONI FAMILY BY

GHIRLANDAIO AND BOTTICELLI

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3 See also the judicious study in Fahy 2008.

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second wife, Ginevra Gianfigliazzi, who is neglected by scholars, ap

7 The quotation is from van der Sm an 2010b, 5.

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about which woman is depicted occurred as early as 1550, when Gior-

10 VASARI 1991, 1:465; Vasari 1906, 3:266.

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clan, the Tornaquinci, clustered their country holdings in a traditional

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Archival documents and architectural evidence clarify the situation.

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39 Schmid 2002, 127-128 (pointing to stylistic differences to explain "die unübersehba

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nuptials of the Florentine elite varied in particular details and expendi-

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fortunately, she used Pompeo Litta's unreliable genealogical charts,

49 Litta 1836, s.v. Tornabuoni, pls. I and II.

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in Ghirlandaio's Visitation ,54 Moreover, as Hörne observed more than

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the dynastic alliance sealed by her marriage, would be eternally comm

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John Pope-Hennessy's influential but specious belief in the prece-

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ate for a dead woman represented in profile, eternally static within an

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Hatfield's doubt about Lorenzo's portrayal is not new, but in all

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holding hand on hip, engaging the spectator with a direct gaze.80 Th

80 Cadogan 2000, 225 and pl. 83.

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marriage was perhaps envisaged or close to finalization by Octobe

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at the beginning of his career when he decorated the Vespucci chapel

93 Brockhaus 1902, 103-104.

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99 The quotation is from Ettlinger and Ettlinger 1976, 151.

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for another author, because the dead Giovanna is presumed to be de

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nabuoni escutcheon underneath, paired with Venus holding flowers in

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The association of the recognizable pendant with only three Torna

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Acidini Luchinat, Cristina, Botticelli. Allegorie mitologiche , Milan, 2001.

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Caneva, Caterina, Botticelli. Catalogo completo dei dipinti , Florence, 1990.