Piero di Cosimo - Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (1490)
- Title: Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci
- Artist: Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522)
- Date: 1490
- Made in: Florence, Italy
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Dimensions: 57 x 42 cm
- Location: Musée Condé, Chantilly, France
- Photo credit: Google Arts & Culture on Wikimedia
In this portrait executed after her death, Simonetta is a bare-breasted, pure, young woman with a married-woman’s hairdo. Simonetta died when 23, hence the symbols- the gold necklace with a snake twining it and going for its own tail (a symbol of the circle of life or of eternal life), the dark cloud and her turned towards a dead tree.
Simonetta Vespucci was a celebrated Florentine beauty. She is represented in strict profile. Her pale, almost marble-like face is turned left, the line of her nose and forehead forming a continuous, elegant curve reminiscent of ancient cameos and Roman coins. The bust, however, twists slightly toward the viewer, so that the portrait feels both rigorously “antique” and subtly animated. Her beauty was inspiring to Sandro Botticello, who used her as a model for his famous paintings The Birth of Venus and Spring (Primavera).
Her hair is one of the most striking elements of the painting. Simonetta’s reddish-gold locks are elaborately braided and coiled high on her head, threaded with strings of pearls, ribbons, and jewels that loop and twist like a piece of goldsmith’s work. Each strand is minutely rendered, creating a shimmering mass that crowns her like a piece of living sculpture. This complex coiffure, along with her delicate earrings and the fine embroidery of her dress, marks her as a woman of high status and fashion in late-Quattrocento Florence.
Piero’s portrait blends real person and mythic type, portrait and poetic invention. The painting is both a commemorative likeness of a woman who died young and an allegorical image that folds together themes of eros and mortality, the idea of fragile, fleeting life.
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