From Genoa they crush the Simonetta Venus in the Gulf: “A galactic fool”
“The last, cyclopean, madness of ‘iconographic’ exegesis involving the canvas of the good Sandro depicting the Birth of Venus was staged under the patronage of the Municipality of La Spezia, at CAMeC La Spezia, where we started from the hypothesis that the background of Sandro Botticelli’s work is none other than the Gulf of Poets. I promised not to talk about it, but, in the end, I have to retrace my steps and say what I think of a truly questionable “cultural encounter”. ” They fly broadsides between Genoa and La Spezia on the theme of the alleged La Spezia setting of the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. To mark last Saturday’s appointment with tones that are to say the least contemptuous is Giacomo Montanariart historian that the Municipality of Genoa has appointed to the Museum committee of the Royal Palace and scientific curator of the Roll days.
“[…] the assurance – on the part of the participants – that the meeting was really wanted to “deny” unfounded rumors, turned out to be the exact opposite: the opportunity to have a galactic idiot like that of the Gulf of Poets written everywhere as background of the Birth of Venus. What a pity ”, writes the scholar on his Facebook profile, linking the Municipality of La Spezia and the CAMeC. “There is NO certain portrait of Simonetta, ergo we do not know what her face she had and it follows that we cannot” identify “her in any work. THERE IS NO document that links Sandro Botticelli and Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, so we cannot assume that he painted the semblant here and there ”.
“I had strongly hoped that the participation in this La Spezia meeting of a scholar of the caliber of Cristina Acidini (whom Botticelli undoubtedly knows well) might want to relegate FOREVER to oblivion such bizarre and absurd hypotheses as this, of which the History of Art has no need at all ”, and then the press releases accompanying the meeting are cited.
Actually, the colleague Marzia Ratti, among the speakers at the conference, through the same social network had in the past few hours made a rather clear picture. “From a historiographic point of view, the connection with the landscape derives from later sources, nineteenth-twentieth century, based on the juxtaposition of the alleged origins of Simonetta Cattaneo who was married to Marco Vespucci. From a geographical point of view, the ‘port’ of La Spezia was still far from having assumed that importance which will be more than three centuries later. Above all, there is a lack of documents on the work (and also on the other two) that could give us certain data of understanding and judgment ”.