“Ginevra de’ Benci” by Leonardo da Vinci
“Ginevra de’ Benci” by Leonardo da Vinci depicts a well-known young Florentine aristocrat. Leonardo painted the portrait in Florence in 1474 to commemorate Ginevra’s marriage at the age of 16.
The juniper bush that fills much of the background was regarded as a symbol of female virtue, in Renaissance Italy, while the Italian word for juniper, echo’s Ginevra’s name.
Ginevra is shown beautiful but reserved with no hint of a smile. Her gaze, although forward, seems indifferent to the viewer.
The reverse of the panel is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase “beauty adorns virtue.”
This motto symbolizes Ginevra’s intellectual and moral virtue aligned with her physical beauty. The juniper, encircled by laurel and palm, suggests her name.
The laurel and palm are in the personal emblem of a Venetian ambassador to Florence, whose platonic relationship with Ginevra is revealed in poems exchanged between them.
An infrared examination has revealed the ambassador’s motto “Virtue and Honor” beneath Ginevra’s motto, making it most probable that the ambassador was somehow involved in the commission of this portrait.
As a woman of renowned beauty, Ginevra de’ Benci was also the subject of poems written by other prominent members of Florence, including the Medici family and Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Platonic Love
Platonic love is a type of love or a close relationship that is nonsexual. It is named after the Greek philosopher Plato, though the philosopher never used the term himself.
In the Middle Ages, there was a renewed interest in Plato, and although Plato’s discussions of love initially centered on relationships that were sexual between members of the same-sex, the meaning of platonic love transformed during the Renaissance, leading to the contemporary sense of nonsexual heterosexual love.
The English term is derived from the concept in Plato’s Symposium of the love of the idea of good which lies at the root of virtue and truth.
For a brief period, Platonic love was a fashionable subject in some royal courts of Europe, and platonic love was the theme of some of the courtly masques. However, the fashion soon came under pressures of social and political change.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, scientist, and engineer who was already famous in his lifetime and is today considered a genius.
Leonardo’s masterpiece had considerable influence during his lifetime and continued to influence and attract lovers of history and art in our life.
Did you know?
- This painting by Leonardo da Vinci is the only one in a public museum in the Americas.
- A sizable strip was removed from the painting at some stage in the past. It was removed from the bottom of this painting, presumably due to damage, and Ginevra’s arms and hands were lost.
Ginevra de’ Benci
- Title: Ginevra de’ Benci
- Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
- Created: c. 1474–8
- Periods: High Renaissance
- Media: Oil paint on panel
- Dimensions: 38.1 cm × 37 cm (15.0 in × 15 in)
- Museum: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Ginevra de’ Benci, 1474/1478, Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
- Name: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
- Born: 1452 – Vinci, Republic of Florence (present-day Italy)
- Died: 1519 (aged 67) – Amboise, Kingdom of France
- Movement: High Renaissance
- Masterpieces:
- Copies or from Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci
- The Battle of Anghiari – Copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lost Painting
- “Leda and the Swan” by Cesare da Sesto, after Leonardo da Vinci
- “Leda and the Swan” after Leonardo da Vinci, Attributed to Il Sodoma
- “Leda and the Swan” by Francesco Melzi, after Leonardo da Vinci
- “Virgin and Child with Young St John the Baptist” by Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci
Ginevra’s Story
Ginevra de’ Benci
A Virtual Tour of the National Gallery of Art
- “Ginevra de’ Benci” by Leonardo da Vinci
- “A Young Girl Reading” by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
- “Small Cowper Madonna” by Raphael
- “The Alba Madonna” by Raphael
- “Nude on a Divan” by Amedeo Modigliani
- “Nude on a Blue Cushion” by Amedeo Modigliani
- “Saint Jerome” by El Greco
- “The Houses of Parliament, Sunset” by Claude Monet (National Gallery of Art, DC)
- “Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)” by Winslow Homer
- “Madame Moitessier” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
- Adrienne (Woman with Bangs) by Amedeo Modigliani
- “Watson and the Shark” by John Singleton Copley
- “The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries” by Jacques-Louis David
- “The Boating Party” by Mary Cassatt
- “Interior of the Pantheon, Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Panini
- Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- “Quadrille at the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- “A Dutch Courtyard” by Pieter de Hooch
- “The Mother and Sister of the Artist” by Berthe Morisot
- “New York” by George Bellows
- Self-Portrait by John Singleton Copley
- “Self-Portrait” by Benjamin West
- “Symphony in White, No. 1″ by James Abbott McNeill Whistler
- A Prince of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder
- A Princess of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder
- “Skiffs on the Yerres” by Gustave Caillebotte
- “The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna” by Raphael
- “The Equatorial Jungle” by Henri Rousseau
- Masterpieces of the National Gallery of Art
- “Venus and Adonis” by Titian
- “Waterloo Bridge” by Claude Monet
- “Christ at the Sea of Galilee” by Circle of Tintoretto
- “Both Members of This Club” by George Bellows
- “Club Night” by George Bellows
Portrait de Ginevra de’ Benci Leonardo da Vinci
Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra de Benci
~~~
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
~~~
Photo Credit 1) Leonardo da Vinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons