Word: ginevra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...however, an assumption that guided the way women were painted in quattrocento Italy. Actually, one feels that this show comes about 35 years late. It should have been done back in the '60s, when the National Gallery bought Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci from Liechtenstein. Leonardo was in his early '20s when he painted this daughter of a rich Florentine banker, circa 1474-78. On the front of the panel you see the familiar face--that pale, egg-smooth, cold teenage mask--a girl soberly dressed in brown, the blue lacing of her bodice neatly echoing the blues...
...inwardness and remoteness of this girl are emphasized by the spiky leaves of the dark tree behind her--a juniper, ginevra in the Italian of the day, her given name. Then, on the back of the panel, is the explanatory inscription. A branch of laurel and a palm frond--for glory and virtue--enclose a twig of juniper, with the inscription "Virtutem forma decorat" (Beauty adorns virtue...
...formal precision, his exquisite control of all the microforms within the larger silhouettes--the serpentine waves and knotted bun of hair, the lovely complexities of brocade and embroidery--make this one of the greatest panel paintings of the 15th century and one of greater interest than Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci...