Graduate Student, Italian Studies
Thesis Title: Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci: Culture and Context
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Dr Ita Mac Carthy
David Hemsoll |
About
My PhD thesis will focus upon Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, using her as a point of access through which to develop an original understanding of the culture of late fifteenth-century Florence. Frequently believed by art historians to be the muse of Botticelli, she makes numerous posthumous appearances in Florentine poetry. These largely neglected verses shed light not only upon modes of literary production in Quattrocento Florence, but also upon its links with visual art and social mores. My MPhil offers close-readings of the verncular texts in which Simonetta appears, a study of her place in the Italian poetic tradition, and a reconstruction of the literary circle that transformed her from mortal woman to ‘nymph’. My PhD will build on that work, placing Simonetta within three further contexts that are key to understanding the Italian Renaissance as a whole: Medicean politics, Florentine visual culture and the history of women. It will combine feminist, New Historicist, literary and art historical methodologies to provide an innovative study of the forces that shaped poetic and artistic production in this most influential of periods.
It will answer the following questions:
-To what extent should poetry written in Simonetta’s honour be read as a) directly inspired by her fame and beauty; b) an attempt to gain the favour of her admirers, the Florentine patrons Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici; c) a textual conversation within a literary elite?
-What light does she shed upon the dialogue between art and literature in fifteenth-century Italy? What are the reasons for the similarities between Simonetta as portrayed in poems such as Poliziano’s Stanze and certain female figures in paintings such as Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’? Why did the myth of ‘la bella Simonetta’ take hold in art history?
-How were representations of Simonetta affected by Quattrocento attitudes towards women, and vice versa? How does praise of her virtues impact upon our understanding of Florentine ideals of womanhood?
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