Two particularly notable paintings by Lavinia Fontana

It’s fair to say that almost every painting featured in Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker, the exhibition that the National Gallery of Ireland is currently dedicated to the Bolognese artist, has the power of charming the viewer but two in particular – Cleopatra (1585 ca. or 1605) and Venus and Mars (1595 ca.) – have had me hooked on their iconography since the exhibition opened in May. 

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), Cleopatra, 1585 ca. or 1605. Galleria Spada, Roma.

Let’s admit it right away. When it comes to Cleopatra, art historians don’t agree on almost anything, from the dating (1585, according to Federico Zeri who compiled and published the catalogue of the collection in 1954, or 1605 when the Bolognese painter had already moved to Rome) to the attribution of the work to Fontana and the identity of the subject depicted. There is widespread agreement on one thing though – that the attire of the subject evokes Eastern fashion.
The painting is held in the collection of the Galleria Spada and, when not on tour, exhibited in the so-called studiolo piccolo. This is the space that, built by Cardinal Bernardino Spada during the 1630s, used to exhibit the oldest paintings of the collection. Some scholars suggest that the painting was acquired by the cardinal between 1627 and 1631 while in Bologna as papal legate, whereas others that it entered the collection following the marriage in 1636 of Orazio Spada, Cardinal Bernardino’s nephew, with Maria Veralli. She was the sole heir of an eminent Roman family whose collection included several important works of art, hence the indication of ‘collezione Spada-Veralli’ next to numerous paintings in the gallery printed literature.

Lavinia Fontana’s Cleopatra hanging above Parmigianino’s Tre Heads, and between Amico Aspertini’s Saint Cristopher and Saint Luke and a Portrait of Pope Paul III after Titian.

The Galleria Spada still shows its quadreria in the original set-up, characterized by paintings thronging its space and covering the entire walls from floor to ceiling. As much as I love these dazzling displays, there is always the risk of barely making some paintings out. Lavinia Fontana’s Cleopatra is a case in point. As you can see from the photo I took early this year, regardless of the time you spend with the work (which is a tad smaller than a Renaissance portrait) some details will always be hard, if not impossible, to see. So, you can imagine my elation at discovering that the painting was among those exhibited in the Dublin exhibition.
But then, once I found myself so close to the painting, after marvelling (without straining my neck) at all the details but mostly that starched (because it must have been!) veil making a peak over the heroine’s forehead, I started wondering where the asp would have bitten Cleopatra with such an attire. 
The Egyptian queen, as everyone will remember, chose suicide rather than to be exhibited as a war trophy after Octavian had defeated her and her husband Mark Antony.
With representation of the Egyptian queen becoming more and more sensual and seductive over the years – from Andrea Solario’s version dating to the first half of the Cinquecento, to La Cleopatra Barberini by Giovanni Lanfranco, which is one of the most theatrical Baroque examples – try as I might, I couldn’t recollect seeing other examples of a fully clothed dying Cleopatra.
In fairness, it has been pointed out that Lavinia’s original presentation of the subject must be linked to the intention of presenting a different Cleopatra – the ruler and the leader, not the lover of Julius Caesar and the wife of Mark Antony. But even allowing for this possibility, such interpretation doesn’t explain quite a few elements of the composition.
The one offered and published in 2018 by Liana de Girolami Cheney seems to have found the key to explain them.

The repetition of the letter “C” – reversed in the case of the veil that goes from the back of the head to the waistline, the fingers, the motif of interlocked letters around the ridge of the vase’s cup on the table in the foreground, the bird’s curved beak and the bust’s back of the head profile on top of the wardrobe in the background – points to the initial of the name of the subject depicted. There is no reason to doubt that we are in the presence of Cleopatra. Just not Cleopatra the queen but rather Cleopatra the Alchemist. 

Crucial for the resolution of this case of mistaken identity has been a folio that, contained in a codex now in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, has been attributed to this remarkable ancient scientist who lived in Alexandria during the third century BCE.
Referring to the diagrams and objects present on the Venetian folio, Cheney claims that the motifs on the front panel of the intarsia armoire – wheels, circles, and stars – allude to alchemy, while the objects on the armoire – a three-leg vase, a female bust, and a bird – celebrate Cleopatra’s success and immortal fame.
There is (almost complete) agreement among art historians that the bird is an ibis, venerated in ancient Egypt, and the bust may represent Diana. What Cheney contributes to these theories is that the Roman goddess was also celebrated as the Great Mother of alchemy, and that the tree-footed vase was associated with Apollo, God of Sun and Light.
But what about the asp that in the painting we see emerging from the brass vase in the foreground? Well, the most tell-tale clue may refer to the Ouroboros (a snake eating itself) design, whose invention is attributed to Cleopatra the Alchemist.
The elaborate motif of a wing-headed man with a long beard on the vase has been paired with an illustration from a sixteenth century manuscript representing the sun resuscitating from fire through water. This, in alchemy books, was seen as a symbol of transformation, whereas the knot on the nape of Cleopatra’s neck, referring to the number 8, would have been a symbol of infinity.

Are these motifs enough to support the identification? Have we ‘solved’ the portrait? So far, Cheney’s interpretation hasn’t been argued against. 

Moving on to the second painting whose iconography has caught my interest, I can safely say that the only thing that Venus and Mars has in common with the one previously discussed is the exhibition room in which they hang – Allegory and Myth.

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), Venus and Mars, 1559 ca. Fundación Casa de Alba, Madrid.

The painting that belongs to the Fundación Casa de Alba and is exhibited in Palazzo Liria in Madrid. I haven’t visited the collection yet, but I am confident that wherever it hangs viewers won’t be left to ponder on the meaning of that pat on the butt.

As it had already happened with Cleopatra, once I found myself in front of the painting I started to scratch my head in puzzlement trying to remember previous examples and understand how Lavinia came to paint such a scene.
Directed by the catalogue entry to a small but enlightening volume written by Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, the scholar who attributed the painting to Lavinia in 2008, I discovered that Venus and Mars is a one-off so my attempts to recollect something similar had been vain.
And yet, Un apice erotico di Lavinia Fontana makes a brilliant job describing the cultural context that led to Lavinia’s composition.

Venus and Mars occurred at the end of a process that, in the middle of the sixteenth century, saw the rebirth of the theme of the Venus Callipyge after the reappearance in Rome of a statue which is now in the Museo Archeologico of Naples. The sculpture was described for the first time in 1556 by the Bolognese scientist Ulisee Aldrovandi who saw it in the Farnese collection in Rome.

Venus Callipyge, 1st century BCE. National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

Pardon my digression, but I find it astonishing that the forgotten English word callipygian which literally means ‘having beautiful, well-shaped buttocks’ hasn’t made a comeback yet considering how hard it has been during the last decade or so going about your day without experiencing the prominent backsides of a certain American TV family.

Getting back to the book, Dal Pozzolo reminds us that even before the uncovering of the ancient Roman statue, Renaissance artists had already celebrated the beauty of the body, backside included. Raffello Sanzio’s Le Tre Grazie would sufficiently illustrate this point.
The excursus continues with the careful analysis of the variations on the theme of the naked Venus produced in Veneto (after all, Dal Pozzolo is a specialist in Venetian painting from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries) up to the version offered by Veronese of Titian’s Venus with a mirror. It is this additional development of the subject in which Veronese introduced Mars in the scene, that represents the final step to Lavinia’s exceptional achievement.
So, to sum it up, after more than a century of beating around the bush, Lavinia gets to the point!

Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), Venus with a mirror, 1585 ca. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

In addition to the art historical investigation, the volume offers a thorough analysis of all the objects in the painting, from the arms of Mars to the pearls under Venus’ buttocks.
Particularly interesting is the suggestion that painting Venus holding a narcissus (even though the goddess’ flower was the rose) which was a symbol of vanity but also stupidity, Lavinia may have wanted to leave a biting remark for the patron (possibly Jacopo Boncompagni, the son of Pope Gregorio XIII) and the viewers.

Stupidità (stampa, elemento d'insieme) - ambito veneto (sec. XVII, sec. XVII)

Further reading:

Liana de Girolami Cheney. Lavinia Fontana’s Cleopatra the Alchemist, Journal of Literature and Art Studies, August 2018, Vol. 8, No.8, pp. 1159-1180. 

Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo. Un apice erotico di Lavinia Fontana, ZeL Edizioni, Treviso, 2019.