Visconti marriage & betrothal commemorations
Posted: 11 Jan 2013, 05:02
I debated whether this should go in "Researcher's Study" or "Unicorn Terrace." I put it here because I am mostly reporting an art historian's study of the topic. It builds on a theme in the "Petrarch Trionfi Motifs in early Trionfi decks" thread, notably my post at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=906&p=13355&hilit=Count#p13355, which examined the theme of the virtues in art for the Visconti (which in fact is the topic discussed by the art historian in question immediately before she turns to the present topic), but the present post is somewhat more off that topic than the one I just linked to. Here I also touch on themes in the "How Petrarch Became Famous" thread, as will become evident.
In Five Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Edith Kirsch displays a picture of the Cary-Yale (CY) Love card, with a provocative caption.
In the text, she doesn't justify her dating and interpretation, but does put the image into a broader context (p. 81).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Folio ... _Hours.jpg
For this last, I see a certain structural similarity to the CY Love card, Cupid replacing the radiant sun. The similarity is even closer for "Marseille" versions, in which there is a sunburst behind Cupid and an additional person below. For the ones of the Madonna of Mercy, I detect a structural similarity to the CY so-called "Fame/Glory" card, with the otherworldly lady above, arms archlike over the this-worldly figures below.
Now for the "larger dynastic concerns." In 1403 Michelino da Besozzo did an illuminated genealogy of the Visconti, based on the funeral oration given for Giangaleazzo, given, as the introductory rubric says, "Master Petrus de Castelletto of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, of the church of the Blessed Augustine in Pavia" (Kirsch p. 79). (I include Fra Petrus's order because I suspect that the imagery of the tarot is related to a specifically Augustinian tradition [as opposed to a Dominican one but perhaps not excluding the Benedictines]; but I do not have enough data for this to be more than a suspicion. Augustine's tomb was at Pavia.)
Kirsch devotes 7 large pages (78-84) to this genealogy, immediately after her discussion of the 12 Virtues (the 7 plus 5 more) that appear in it (see , and before another genealogy illustrated for Filippo. I will try to cover the parts relevant for us. To read more about these illuminations, see http://trionfi.com/visconti-genealogy, where there is an enumeration of the complete genealogy, thanks to Ross, and a reproduction of the last page. What is of interest here is primarily its first page.
Here is the end of Kirsch's introductory section on this topic, which you will notice also suggests a connection to Petrarch, about which more later.
The prominence of Jupiter and Venus here has led Trionfi, in the link given above, to speculate a connection with the "game of the gods" designed by Marziano (at some time between 1415 and 1425), in which 2 of the 4 chief gods of the suits were Jupiter and Venus: the deck in this way expresses specifically Visconti mythology.
Then Kirsch describes the formal structure of the roundels. She says that copying Roman coins started in Verona, 1310, and that this style, for medals was begun in 1390 by Francesco Novello da Carrara in Padua, "doubtless under the influence of Petrarch", to commemorate his victory over the Viscontis. Roman coins' radiant suns, showing the emperors as sol invictus, are similar to Visconti devices. The manner of inscribing the names associated with the roundels is similar to that of the Carrara palace, in the murals illustrating Petrarch's Viris Illustribus:
Here is what she means (like her fig. 101):
http://padovacultura.padovanet.it/manif ... anti1.jpeg
For better photos, see http://www.arpai.org/padova-universita- ... -20062007/. Kirsch is relying on Mommsen that the layout of the 1540 repainting was similar to the original. Another similarity with Petrarch is the context within which this connection to the Greco-Roman gods is set, namely, a Christian prayer-book. It is this joining of pagan and Christian that Petrarch accomplished, after much revision, in his "Triumph of Fame" and continued in De Viris Illustribus (Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, p. 44).
Kirsch turns to Filippo's illumination. In the Landau-Finaly (LF), which is the manuscript of the Visconti Hours that completes what dei Grassi started under Giangaleazzo, there is one page with Filippo's portrait on the bottom. Filippo rarely had his portrait shown, so this in itself is unusual. I will give you the full color version, as opposed to the black and white one in Kirsch 1991. Along the borders are some of the same personnages that Michelino painted on the first page of his genealogy. Kirsch identifies the man at the top as Aeneas, son of Venus by Anchises. Then on the left we have first Venus and then Anchises. Venus is "identifiable by the now-tarnished silver "pillbox" and veiled headdress, which is probably a form of the [polos worn by this goddess in antiquity." Then:
Then at the bottom we have Filippo. His position, in the center below two members of the same family but of opposite sex, has definite significance, Kirsch says. Moreover:
Here is what a "tree of consiguinity" looks like, used to determine how closely two people are related for marriage purposes:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GQj03avQWq8/U ... ilippo.JPG. The portrait of Filippo also has other significance. Here her Fig. 47 is BR115, from the earlier volume of the Hours, the one largely done for Giangaleazzo: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aySV35cztYM/U ... leazzo.JPG. The figure in the middle is David, and the text is Psalm CXVIII. Here is Kirsch, commenting on the later page, with Filippo:
Heraldics, of course, are a noteworthy feature of the CY as a whole, missing from the Brera-Brambilla court cards which are otherwise similar. If indeed the fountain is a Sforza heraldic (per Kaplan, but that's not enough; and the quince, in Swords, unless it's just a fashionable dress design), particular heraldics could have been added any time after the betrothal of 1431, although at a time when Sforza was in Filippo's service. In that way Filippo's own marriage, and that of his ancestors, could be commemorated while also commemorating the anticipated marriage of his only child.
In Five Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Edith Kirsch displays a picture of the Cary-Yale (CY) Love card, with a provocative caption.
In the text, she doesn't justify her dating and interpretation, but does put the image into a broader context (p. 81).
"Kirsch 1981" is her Ph.D. thesis. Note that "betrothal" is included here. The Giangaleazzo illuminations are below, to which I add her Fig. 48. For the marriage of Anne and Joachim in BR 1, Kirsch's fig. 65, I give you a color reproduction off the Web:It is a striking fact, which should probably be seen in conjunction with other visual expressions of their dynastic concerns, that beginning with Giangaleazzo the Viscontis demonstrated an unparalleled predilection for pictorially recording their own marriages or betrothals. As suggested in chapter II, the miniature of the patron and his bride on folio 258 in Lat. 757 may be the first wedding portrait in the series (Fig. 51). BR 1 in the Psalter-Hours may be the second (Fig. 65). The group also includes a representation of Filippo Maria and Marie of Savoy on a tarot card (Yale University, Beinecke Library, Cary Collection of Playing cards, No. ITA109 [Fig. 61]) and a portrait of Francesco Sforza and Filippo Maria's daughter, Bianca Maria Visconti, in a miniature in Cremona (Archivio patrocchiale di S. Sigismondo, Atto di donazione, reproduced in Visconti a Milano,, fig. 204). The tradition was carried on by Galeazzo Maria Sforza, whose marriage to Bona of Savoy in 1468 was represented in 1476 by Cristoforo de' Predis in Turin, Bibl. reale, MS. Var. 124, fols.1v, 2v, where the bridal couple, as in Banco Rari 397, are depicted as Anna and Joachim (reproduced in Kirsch, 1981, figs. 70, 71; see also page 51 above).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Folio ... _Hours.jpg
For this last, I see a certain structural similarity to the CY Love card, Cupid replacing the radiant sun. The similarity is even closer for "Marseille" versions, in which there is a sunburst behind Cupid and an additional person below. For the ones of the Madonna of Mercy, I detect a structural similarity to the CY so-called "Fame/Glory" card, with the otherworldly lady above, arms archlike over the this-worldly figures below.
Now for the "larger dynastic concerns." In 1403 Michelino da Besozzo did an illuminated genealogy of the Visconti, based on the funeral oration given for Giangaleazzo, given, as the introductory rubric says, "Master Petrus de Castelletto of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, of the church of the Blessed Augustine in Pavia" (Kirsch p. 79). (I include Fra Petrus's order because I suspect that the imagery of the tarot is related to a specifically Augustinian tradition [as opposed to a Dominican one but perhaps not excluding the Benedictines]; but I do not have enough data for this to be more than a suspicion. Augustine's tomb was at Pavia.)
Kirsch devotes 7 large pages (78-84) to this genealogy, immediately after her discussion of the 12 Virtues (the 7 plus 5 more) that appear in it (see , and before another genealogy illustrated for Filippo. I will try to cover the parts relevant for us. To read more about these illuminations, see http://trionfi.com/visconti-genealogy, where there is an enumeration of the complete genealogy, thanks to Ross, and a reproduction of the last page. What is of interest here is primarily its first page.
Here is the end of Kirsch's introductory section on this topic, which you will notice also suggests a connection to Petrarch, about which more later.
Then she talks about the first page:The form of the roundels in the Visconti genealogy, however, differs conspicuously from the simply inscribed disks of consanguinity trees, and is to my knowledge unprecedented. Onto the trunk of a consanguinity tree, Fra Pietro and Michelino grafted a novel genealogy, linking the Viscontis to the dawn of Roman history as emphatically as possible. In so doing, they acted with knowledge of and earned a place in a tradition of North Italian antiquarianism rooted in the early Trecento humanism of Verona and richly nourished by the protracted residence at the courts of North Italy of the greatest humanist of the Trecento, Petrarch. [Footnote: T. Mommsen ["Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in Padua," Art Bulletin 34, 1952, 95-116; R. Weiss [The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiguity, 1969], esp. 30-58; Schmitt ["Zur Widerbelebung der Antike im Trecento," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 18, 1974], 167-218).]
The flamelike roots of the Visconti family tree at the top of folio 7 in the Paris manuscript (Fig. 31) form a roundel within which Jupiter joins his daughter Venus in marriage with Anchises, underscoring the Visconti claim to descent, through Venus, from the king of the gods himself. [Footnote: In the marriage scene, Jupiter assists Anchises in placing an enormous ring on the index finger of Venus's right hand. Rings are also prominent in the only two surviving panels by Michelino, both of which represent marriages--the Marriage of the Virgin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Pinacoteca, Siena. The particular attention paid to rings in these paintings has led Eisler [The Prayer Book of Michelino da Besozzo, 1981], 12, to suggest that Michelino may have been trained as a goldsmith. [There follows the paragraph I quoted at the beginning of this post.]] The family's descent from Jupiter is emphasized also by the oak leaves with golden acorns that frame the roundels throughout the genealogy. [Footnote: Michelino's awareness of the oak not only as the tree of Jupiter but also as the tree of the Golden Age is suggested by the golden acorns in the genealogy. See also chapter II, note 24. As we have seen above, the oak also plays an emblematic role in Giangaleazzo's Psalter-Hours in Florence (Fig. 29) and in the miniature of Giangaleazzo's investiture as Duke on Folio 1 of the Coronation Missal (Fig. 3)....[other examples follow]].
The prominence of Jupiter and Venus here has led Trionfi, in the link given above, to speculate a connection with the "game of the gods" designed by Marziano (at some time between 1415 and 1425), in which 2 of the 4 chief gods of the suits were Jupiter and Venus: the deck in this way expresses specifically Visconti mythology.
Then Kirsch describes the formal structure of the roundels. She says that copying Roman coins started in Verona, 1310, and that this style, for medals was begun in 1390 by Francesco Novello da Carrara in Padua, "doubtless under the influence of Petrarch", to commemorate his victory over the Viscontis. Roman coins' radiant suns, showing the emperors as sol invictus, are similar to Visconti devices. The manner of inscribing the names associated with the roundels is similar to that of the Carrara palace, in the murals illustrating Petrarch's Viris Illustribus:
The format was as follows: between fictive pairs of columns, full-length representations of one or more Roman heroes were painted. Beneath the narrative scene was a titulus inscribed on a painted scroll (fig. 101). The similarities with the Visconti genealogy are apparent.
Here is what she means (like her fig. 101):
http://padovacultura.padovanet.it/manif ... anti1.jpeg
For better photos, see http://www.arpai.org/padova-universita- ... -20062007/. Kirsch is relying on Mommsen that the layout of the 1540 repainting was similar to the original. Another similarity with Petrarch is the context within which this connection to the Greco-Roman gods is set, namely, a Christian prayer-book. It is this joining of pagan and Christian that Petrarch accomplished, after much revision, in his "Triumph of Fame" and continued in De Viris Illustribus (Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, p. 44).
Kirsch turns to Filippo's illumination. In the Landau-Finaly (LF), which is the manuscript of the Visconti Hours that completes what dei Grassi started under Giangaleazzo, there is one page with Filippo's portrait on the bottom. Filippo rarely had his portrait shown, so this in itself is unusual. I will give you the full color version, as opposed to the black and white one in Kirsch 1991. Along the borders are some of the same personnages that Michelino painted on the first page of his genealogy. Kirsch identifies the man at the top as Aeneas, son of Venus by Anchises. Then on the left we have first Venus and then Anchises. Venus is "identifiable by the now-tarnished silver "pillbox" and veiled headdress, which is probably a form of the [polos worn by this goddess in antiquity." Then:
On the right side, the top figure, looking at Venus, is Aeneas's wife Lavinia. Beneath her is either their son Ascanius, or their grandson Anglus Senior, crowned in laurel. The beardless youth beneath him is Anglus Junior. So they are the same people as on page one of Giangaleazzo's genealogy. The Angluses are not part of Roman mythology; they are Visconti mythology, made up to link them with the gods, something that later became quite fashionable; Anglus Junior is the mythical founder of the Viscontis' ancestral town.The figure below Anchises in the left border is evidently a female, because her hair is entwined with a ribbon and she wears a hat, which in the genealogy on LF 57v is apparently reserved for females. This woman may be Hippodameia, the daughter of Anchises and Venus, "whom her father and queenly mother heartily loved in their hall, for that she excelled all maidens of her years in comeliness, and in handiwork, and in wisdom." [Footnote: Iliad xiii, 429ff. (trans. A. T. Murray, II, London, 1924.
Then at the bottom we have Filippo. His position, in the center below two members of the same family but of opposite sex, has definite significance, Kirsch says. Moreover:
The figures in the lower corners may also allude to Filippo Maria's parents, Giangaleazzo and Caterina, who were first cousins (and hence, like Hippodameia and Anglus, collateral members of the same family), who needed a papal dispensation for their marriage. The male and female cousins in the lower corners of trees of consanguinity (Fig. 99) are also suggested by this image. Like Filippo Maria, the young woman and man at either side of him are also shown in three-quarter view, in contrast to the strict profile views of the other figures in the genealogy.
Here is what a "tree of consiguinity" looks like, used to determine how closely two people are related for marriage purposes:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GQj03avQWq8/U ... ilippo.JPG. The portrait of Filippo also has other significance. Here her Fig. 47 is BR115, from the earlier volume of the Hours, the one largely done for Giangaleazzo: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aySV35cztYM/U ... leazzo.JPG. The figure in the middle is David, and the text is Psalm CXVIII. Here is Kirsch, commenting on the later page, with Filippo:
But if so, there is a hole in this commemoration: we have a bridegroom but no bride. Genealogies, to be sure, can leave out the wives: what is important is the patrimonial line. Yet his father had in fact done an illumination with both spouses, and so did his descendants. Filippo saw himself in his father's footsteps, and he was a superstitious man; artworks could function a kind of a talisman for its owner. A miniature with both spouses was needed. Yet Filippo was also distrustful of his wives. He had just had one beheaded for alleged adultery. (And this particular page of the manuscript deals with the "transfer of blame": Adam's pointing to Eve as the cause of his sin--after which Filippo practices the second of Petrarch's Triumphs!) What better talisman than a playing card, which can be done over as desired, without having to replace a page in a book--if not the one she identifies as Filippo and Marie, with Visconti and Savoy banners flying, then one of similar design (but perhaps minus the fountain on the man's chest), in that period of the prayer-book's completion, 1427-1434? If you look at the man's face, who does he resemble more, Filippo or Francesco? (It is not clear, but I think it is closer to Filippo's picture than Francesco's, although it hard to know who is trying to emulate what, never mind the actual reality. In the commemorative miniature, http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/impre ... age049.jpg, from http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/imprese/Imprese07.htm) the face is not much similar to the card's. There is also the issue of the hose, red and white (and blue?) in the Sforza, perhaps for Cremona and Pavia (Lorredan at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=855&p=12322&hilit= ... ose#p12322), or maybe for mulberry trees (per SteveM in the same thread). The hose looks red and white on the CY Love card, but the red may have fallen off of one leg. It doesn't mean much, in context, presuming that the Sforza miniature was done after he took control of Pavia.The representation of Filippo Maria is the largest on the page. Set within blue and pink clouds against a golden radiance, it is clearly intended as a parallel to the portrait of his father on BR 115 (Fig. 47). Whereas in the earlier representation, however, Giangaleazzo is bareheaded, Filippo Maria on LF 57v wears a wreath of roses, like the figure we have identified as Anchises. If the rose-wreath is to be understood as an emblem of a bridegroom, Filippo Maria's portrait on this leaf would provide a date for the beginning of the completion of his father's prayerbook--1427, when he married Marie of Savoy, who was in turn descended from the family of Filippo Maria's grandmother, Blanche of Savoy. In that case, Filippo Maria might have been following yet another precedent set by his father: the commissioning of an illuminated prayerbook to commemorate his marriage.
Heraldics, of course, are a noteworthy feature of the CY as a whole, missing from the Brera-Brambilla court cards which are otherwise similar. If indeed the fountain is a Sforza heraldic (per Kaplan, but that's not enough; and the quince, in Swords, unless it's just a fashionable dress design), particular heraldics could have been added any time after the betrothal of 1431, although at a time when Sforza was in Filippo's service. In that way Filippo's own marriage, and that of his ancestors, could be commemorated while also commemorating the anticipated marriage of his only child.