GIOVANNI MARIA BUTTERI (1540 Florence 1606) Allegory... Lot 3008

GIOVANNI MARIA BUTTERI (1540 Florence 1606) Allegory of Patience. Oil on wood. 145.3 × 71 cm. Provenance: - Possibly collection Francesco I de Medici (1541-1587), Florence. - Possibly collection Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756), Rome. - Collection Dr. Armando Buresti, Florence (label on verso). - Kunsthandel Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd, London, 1980. - European private collection. The nearly life-size figure depicts a young woman with bare breasts, her body showing through a muslin veil. Her hair is held by ribbons, black pearl threads and a kind of tiara, which with great freedom recall an ancient headdress. The same antique taste characterizes the jewelry that frames her shoulders, compresses her breasts and supports a medallion in which a figure (Diana?) armed with a bow appears on a black background. The young woman, captured in an elegantly curved pose (inspired by Giambologna's (1529-1608) Grotticella-Venus), directs her gaze to a shoot sprouting from the withered trunk of an olive tree, which she grazes with one hand. It is one of the symbols of the Medici family, which confirms the Florentine origin of the painting. With the other hand, she holds a starry disc surrounded by the mythical figure of Ourobouros, the serpent biting its tail, representing the god of time, Kronos, who is devouring one of his children. The cyclical nature of time is recalled by the sun, which appears in the background on the right in a cloudy sky and is roamed by Apollo in his chariot. The woman's left foot is tied to a rock with a chain over which drips a fine stream of water. This collection of symbols, whose literary sources are classical, corresponds for the most part to those that Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) recommended to his friend Bernadetto Minerbetti (1507-1574), bishop of Arezzo, when he wanted him to paint a picture that would represent the allegory of patience. In a letter dated 14. November 1551, Vasari had described that this should be depicted as a woman neither fully clothed nor fully naked ("né tutta vestita né tutta spogliata, acciò tenga fra la Ricchezza e la Povertà il mezzo"), patient and chained with the left foot ("incatenata per il piè manco per offender meno la parte più nobile"), while a jet of water is not able to erode the rock to which the chain is attached ("fiché el tempo non consuma con le gocciole dell'acqua la pietra, dove ella è incatenata", see K. Frey: Il carteggio di Giorgio Vasari / The literary estate of Giorgio Vasari, Munich 1923-1930, vol. I, 1923, pp. 312-314). The painting made by Vasari, recently identified by Carlo Falciani (Vasari, Michelangelo e l' 'Allegoria della Pazienza', in: Paragone, LXX, 2019, 148/827, pp. 3-35), only partially corresponds to this iconographic project, which nevertheless had considerable success (Giorgio Vasari e l'Allegoria della Pazienza, Ausst.-Kat. A. Bisceglia (ed.), Livorno 2013), especially in Tuscany and Ferrara. This version, unpublished until today, represents an important addition to the knowledge on the subject. As Mina Gregori was the first to recognize (expert opinion of March 19, 1980, copy available), it was painted by Giovanni Maria Butteri, a pupil of Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) and collaborator of Alessandro Allori (1535-1607), who was involved in the decoration of the Studiolo of Francesco I de Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence between 1570 and 1571. The reference to the Medici family makes it likely that our painting was designed for one of the rooms in the private apartments of the Florentine ruler. The richness of the symbols used, the impeccable technical execution and the dramatic interpretation of the landscape bathed in an almost nocturnal light make it clear that the work must have been created shortly after the Florentine Studiolo was decorated in the 1570s. We thank Prof. Mauro Natale for his scientific assistance in cataloguing this painting. This object marked with * (asterisk) is fully subject to VAT, i.e. for these objects VAT will be charged on the hammer price plus buyer's premium. Buyers who present a legally stamped export declaration will be refunded the VAT.