Takács Imre – Buzási Enikő – Jávor Anna – Mikó Árpád szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve, Művészettörténeti tanulmányok Mojzer Miklós hatvanadik születésnapjára (MNG Budapest, 1991)

TÁTRAI Vilmos: Mesefigura egy Piero di Cosimo festményen?

Almost a contemporary, Vasari's testimony is neither decisive nor ignorable. Frizzoni already pointed out that the identification with Cleopatra was not without problems.

5 In each of the late quattrocento and early cinquecento representations, the queen of Egypt holds the snake in her hand close to her breast. It can be added that both in full-length portraits and busts the woman is always shown full face and not in profile. Frizzoni even allows for an assumption that the living necklace is no more than a „ghiribizzo" of the artist's bizarre imagination. In Eve Borsook's hypothesis, it might be identified with the emblem of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici, the snake biting its own tail.

6 At any rate, it is hard to assume that the painter of Procris's death", "Hunting cavemen" or "The battle of Centaurs and Lapithes" wished to spare the spector the shocking sight of suicide. Indeed, the works of the Florentine master are characterized by a lucidity of the iconography. Although his vivid, enchanted imagination gave strong new emphases to figures and stories, he never made the identity of his characters or the message of a story deliberately obscure or hard to make out. Vasari's indication of the theme may only be a mannerist whim: he alleges to have recognized a subtle allusion to Cleopatra where the reference to someone else is unambiguous, at least to those who are tamiliar with the literary model. What Vasari cannot have seen, since it was not on the picture at that time, is the inscription SIMONETTA JANVENSIS VESPVCCIA. Had it been there, it would surely not have been overlooked by him, since it was he who made a connection between some Botticelli pictures and the Florentine beauty, the mistress of Giuliano de Medici also glorified by Poliziano, Simonetta Vespucci who died at a young age in 1476. That the inscription was applied later was first mentioned in the last century, by Ulmann

7

, and later confirmed by Alazard

8 and Bacci . The latter argues that the red of the cloth is visible to the naked eye under the inscription. (I do not know of any technical examination of the inscription, or of its result, if any.) The picture was in the possession of the Vespucci family from an unknown date to 1841. Perhaps the family wished to cherish the memory of a legendary ancestor with the pious fraud of the false inscription. Some of those researchers who accepted the inscription as original explained the snake conceived as an attribute of Cleopatra by assuming that it must have been the desire of the painter and the client to extol Simonetta by comparing her to the renowned ancient beauty.

10 Others appear to have found a more direct connection between Simonetta and the snake motif: they claimed it was the symbol of fatal illness and early death.

11 Eugenio Battisti goes so far as to speak of an escathological symbol claiming that Simonetta, who was the goddess of Spring in her lifetime, became identical with Proserpina, the goddess of Hades, in her death.

12 This interpretation of the snake could be buttressed by the atmosphere suggested by the background: the barren landscape, the dried-out tree and the dark cloud.

13 All these interpretation immediately lose validity as it turns out, which is highly likely, that the inscription is a later addition. No authentic portrait of Simonetta is known - her legend in art history is somewhat similar to Violante's of Venice. But should there be a portrait of her, it could not have been by the hand of Piero di Cosimo who was 14 or 15 when the woman died. All in all, it can be asserted that identifying the woman with Simonetta is just as dubious - if not more - than recognizing Cleopatra in her. When launching another attempt at identifying the woman, one has to enumerate all the distinguishing marks and motifs which might have a role in defining a theme. Such a motif- however generalized it may be - is beauty itself, the desire of the artist to idealize, which clads the figure into a mysthic aura. Added to that is nakednees: since Panofsky it is well known what a positive meaning nudity had in the Italian Renaissance: both Botticelli and Titian represented the divine Venus without clothes and the earthly one dressed in luxurious attires. The hairdress, sumptuously adorned with strings of beads and gems - a unique creation even among the masterly hairstyles of the age - may also have some special significance. So may the cloak of oriental design. The background landspace almost certainly carries some - rather general - meaning. The barren landspace emanates a sinister atmosphere; the dark storm cloud is an ancient motif synmbolizing the tribulations of fate. The dried-out tree on one side and the green tree on the other recall Piero della Francesca's "Resurrection of Christ" (Sansepolcro, Pinacoteca Comunale): using the dead and living trees as symbols of the contrast between death and resurrection, death and eternal life is one of the oldest literary metaphors, similarly to the dark cloud.

14 These general motifs assume a more direct meaning when some sign is found in the picture with a more concrete meaning. In my view, such a motif is the snake intertwining the woman's necklace, which - as has been seen could be related either to Cleopatra or Simonetta only with difficulty. That it is a mere „ghiribizzo d'artista" can be safely discarded in the last quarter of the 15th century in Florence. Naturally, the snake can assume different meanings in different contexts, now signifying wisdom, now the evil forces of the netherworld. In this picture, however, it has no allegoric meaning, it is simply narrative. In my opinion, the snake is the protagonist of a folktale whose other main character is the woman herself with the enigmatic necklace. The story can be read as the third tale of the third night in Giovan Francesco Straparola's „Le piacevoli notti" published in 1550 in Venice. The story abounding in miraculous and eerie elements is about Biancabella, the beauteous daughter of the marquis of Monferrato and the wife of Ferrandino, king of Naples. The king's stepmother conspires to kill her so that one of her two ugly daughters could be forced on Ferrandino by a trick. Though the executioners do not carry out the death sentence, they blind her, cut of her arms, and only the interference of Biancabella's sister, Samaritana first in the form of a snake and later of a human being can effect a happy turn: the wicked stepmother is punished,