The Feminine Gaze and Botticelli’s Smeralda ✎

Portrait of a Lady known as Smeralda Bandinelli by Botticelli (1470-1480)

This portrait (at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) always makes me smile.

I think she has a real warmth and presence that jumps right across 550 years.

For its time, this was a radical painting: it’s one of the most early Florentine portrait depictions of a secular woman in a three-quarter pose. If you look at the early renaissance, this kind of painting really marks a shift. For example, Verrocchio, who later trained Botticelli, easily conformed to religious paintings (of the time) in which the Virgin Mary is rendered in three-quarter - e.g. The Virgin and Child with Two Angels at the National Gallery, London. But not an ordinary woman.

Botticelli rendered a level of psychological presence going beyond (even exceeding) those reserved for the Virgin Mary.

I think the pinnacle of this artistic psychological depth and artistic power (with respect to the feminine gaze) was wielded by Leonardo da Vinci:

Portrait of Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo da Vinci

A funny twist to this legend, and which directly ties the Italian renaissance to Victorian London is that Dante Gabriel Rossetti spotted this painting at Christie’s and bought it. It’s connection to the Pre-Raphaelites is quite obvious, I think.

The Lady of Pity by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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At any rate, I was curious to know who this lady was that Botticelli painted.

Thanks to deligent art historians at the V&A it is possible that a grandson or descendant from the Bandinelli family (in the 1600s) added that name to the bottom of the painting way after it was painted. In those days, families would sometimes “forge” inscriptions to older beautiful artworks to claim that their ancestors were noble and important enough to be painted by masters, like Botticelli.

This leaves us with the fascinating reality that she remains a mysterious beautiful lady from 1470s Florence. 

Her very anonymity draws us to searched out the actual person Botticelli captured on the wood panel.