On June 8 the Galleria dell'Accademia and the Museo Horne of Florence open their doors to an exhibition that will present more than 40 exquisite panel paintings of the fifteenth century from prestigious foreign and Italian museums to evoke married life in the Renaissance, the roles of the couple and, in particular, that of the woman in the domestic circle, the manners and the exemplary conduct recommended as indispensable virtues, that is, as virtù d'amore.
These painted panels were born as part of sumptuous furnishings - chests, spalliere, beds - in fifteenth-century Florentine homes where they celebrated marriage and lineage, civil and conjugal virtues. Commissioned on the occasion of weddings, they were especially destined to furnish the married couple's bedroom, fulcrum of private and public conjugal life. With the stories they depicted, "nuptial paintings" served the fundamental function of conveying messages of warning and encouragement to a couple to adopt a conduct considered as exemplary. This aspect that the show will shed light on, helps us today to focus on a mainstay of fifteenth-century Florentine culture: the virtues of love were subject to laws that were not tied to the emotions but were instead inherent to the social system. The stories illustrated narrate the passages of the wedding ritual, from the sumptuousness of the wedding banquet to the moment when the couple exchange rings, episodes of the long and complex matrimonial procedure which included a series of elaborate contacts and contracts, and not all of them proper to the concept of love.
The exhibition is occasioned by the so-called Cassone Adimari, held by the Galleria dell'Accademia and painted by Masaccio's brother, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni known as Lo Scheggia, which in reality was a large spalliera, a work intended to hang at shoulder height, depicting a Renaissance ball. The panels exhibited offer a panorama of the variety of themes usually portrayed in these furnishings. Drawing on Biblical texts, historical episodes and "modern" authors such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, they portray various aspects of love, as well as the ensuing duties: the Decameron, for example, is the source of inspiration for the story of the patient Griselda, illustrated by Pesellino in the panels from the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, who was a figure symbolic of the virtue of obedience and abnegation that a woman was expected to pursue.
Cassoni were generally placed against walls, which explains why only three sides of them were decorated, the front and the two short sides. The ones that have survived in their entirety are very rare. Among these, this show presents one which depicts the Palio of San Giovanni, painted by Giovanni Toscani, and held by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Others are held at the Museo Horne which hosts another section of the exhibition with works from private collections. It was the custom to commission a pair of cassoni to contain family property and which therefore had a unitary decoration, as attested by the two panels with the celebrations for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis by Bartolomeo di Giovanni (Paris, Louvre), an example of love that triumphs over adversity, or the two amusing cassone fronts with Stories of Ulysses (Krakow, Wavel Castle) by the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni which like a comic book illustrate, one by one, the adventures of the king of Ithaca.
One of the greatest merits of the exhibition lies in bringing together the four panels of the Stories of Ester, divided among the National Gallery of Canada, the Museo Horne and the Pallavicini Collection of Rome, which constituted the short sides of a pair of cassoni designed by Botticelli around 1475, and whose execution also involved the young Filippino Lippi. The Roman panel portraying Mordecai Crying, for which studies confirm Botticelli's authorship, is one of the most awaited, considering that it has not been exhibited for more than 70 years.
We must not forget, however, that marriage meant first and foremost to give life to new progeny and perpetuate the family. Towards this end, the last section of the exhibition is dedicated to family pride, asserted in stories that recount the foundation of famous families like those of Aeneas and David or that, following the texts of Petrarch, celebrate the Triumphs of Fame, Time and Eternity. These images could also be painted on deschi da parto (birth salvers), which were panels of medium dimensions, circular or polygonal in shape, and painted on both sides, which were probably born as trays for carrying meals to women who had just given birth. They soon became gifts of well-wishing for strong and healthy children, and to exorcise the dangers connected with labour and childbirth, and later adorned walls. A particularly outstanding one is the Triumph of Fame painted by Lo Scheggia and today held at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, which belonged to Lorenzo the Magnificent and was realised on the occasion of his birth (1448-1449) or of the wedding of his parents, Piero the Gouty and Lucrezia Tornabuoni.
"In concluding, the exhibition has been conceived also to stir reflection on the society of fifteenth-century Florence and, in particular, on the value of the family and the role of the couple within the family. In hopes of having done something stimulating with respect to today's problem, one question remains unsolved: what room was there for true love? Perhaps outside of the nuptial chambers ...!" (F. Falletti).
The exhibition is promoted by: Minstero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, con la Direzione Regionale per i Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici della Toscana, la Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze con la Galleria dell'Accademia, Firenze Musei, l'Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze.