Why Women Fall in Love with Italy

My friend Susan van Allen provides 100 reasons in her book 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go. 

 

to fall in love

essere inamorata di

by Susan Van Allen

It's not surprising that so many women travelers fall in love with Italy--it overflows with art that glorifies the female form and spirit.

In Florence, the Botticelli Rooms in the Uffizi are an overwhelming example of this glorification, Renaissance style. The most famous of the beauties in this room is "The Birth of Venus" (1484). Here's a story behnd that painting: 

Describing a woman as a Botticelli automatically brings up this famous image of a naked, curvy Venus stepping off a seashell to the shore. But Botticelli actually translates to “little barrel.” A better description of a beautiful woman would be to call her a Simonetta Vespucci , the name of the model for this painting.

Simonetta was Botticelli’s muse, the most adored woman in Florence, and his neighbor’s wife. She came to Florence from Genoa as the fifteen-year-old bride of Marco Vespucci, whose cousin was the famous Italian explorer Amerigo. Her fans called her La Bella Simonetta and liked to say she was born in the Ligurian coastal town of Portovenere, where the Romans believed Venus arose from the sea.

Though these days she’d be ordered to do Pilates to tighten her abs, in 1469 Simonetta’s pear shape was ideal. Only poor starving gals were skinny back then, and Renaissance guys adored chicks with childbearing hips.

In Florence, artists clamored to have Simonetta pose for them, writers sent her love poems, and she was showered with gifts from admirers. Botticelli, an artist on the rise, introduced Simonetta to the men who ran Florence, the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici.

Lorenzo was involved with being Magnificent and his banking and philosophy biz, but smitten with Simonetta, ordered a painting of her for his bed chamber, which some say became Botticelli’s Venus. Giuliano, a sporty type, called for a jousting tournament to be held in honor of the glamour-puss who had quickly become the Marilyn Monroe of Florence.

Botticelli painted Giuliano’s joust banner with the words “The Unparalleled One” under Simonetta’s image. Giuliano won and Simonetta was declared “Queen of Beauty.” Since she was married, there’s no record of nooky between Simonetta and Giuliano, though the locals imagined their steamy affair as fervently as the Brangelina romance of our times.

A year after the joust, twenty-two-year-old Simonetta died of consumption. Her funeral was an Italian day of mourning. Thousands came to Florence to join in her casket procession, weeping and tossing flowers.

Botticelli had started painting The Birth of Venus before Simonetta died. It took him nine years to finish it, perhaps because the thought of his nude muse being gone from him was too tragic to bear.

As you look around the room, you’ll see how Botticelli used Simonetta’s inspiration again and again—from Primavera to The Annunciation. He never married, in fact said the idea of marriage was a nightmare.

When he died, thirty-four years after La Bella Simonetta, Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet. In the Church of Ognissanti, which was Simonetta’s family parish, you can see his wish was granted.

Excerpted from 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go, by Susan Van Allen.  

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Comments

[Grazia Francioli Bittner]

because we are Italian!