Meet the Mysterious Renaissance Muse Immortalized in the Only Leonardo da Vinci Painting in the Americas
Ginevra de’ Benci was a poet famed for her beauty and intellect. But art historians know little about her beyond the writings and artworks left behind by the men who admired her
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Immortalized by Leonardo da Vinci in a 15th-century portrait now housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Ginevra de’ Benci was a celebrated beauty of the Italian Renaissance.
Her likeness—the only da Vinci painting on permanent view in the Americas—was created with oil paints on a flat panel of wood between about 1474 and 1478. At the time, Leonardo was in his 20s, a young artist on the cusp of a grand career. His subject, meanwhile, was a teenager on the cusp of adulthood. As portrayed by Leonardo, Ginevra boasts smooth bronze curls, a flawless porcelain complexion, an elegant neck and noble bearing. Her eyes are heavily lidded, and her face sports a serious, contemplative expression.
The National Gallery acquired Ginevra de’ Benci in 1967 for the hefty sum of $5 million (around $48 million today)—at the time, the highest price paid for a work of art. The double-sided portrait’s previous owner, Franz Josef II, Prince of Liechtenstein, sold it in a desperate bid to raise funds after losing the majority of his family property following World War II.
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Like many famous da Vincis, Ginevra de’ Benci is mired in mystery. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, a curator of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery, says visitors often react to the portrait with “awe and fascination.” She adds, “People have a lot of questions. … They want to know what the Latin says on the back, and why it’s two-sided.”
A leading theory regarding the painting’s creation suggests that Ginevra’s affluent, influential Florentine family commissioned the work to mark her betrothal to the wealthy merchant Luigi Niccolini. The positioning of Ginevra’s profile offers the greatest clue for the occasion: In 15th-century Florence, newlywed couples of means were typically painted with the groom on the left, facing the right, and the woman on the right, facing the left. Because Ginevra is facing right, she was probably not married yet, but rather betrothed. Records indicate that Ginevra wed Luigi in 1474, when she was 16 years old.
Another theory posits that the portrait was commissioned by Italian statesman Bernardo Bembo as a token of his affection for Ginevra. Bembo was a family acquaintance who served as Ginevra’s platonic love interest, meaning he chivalrously tended to her romantic needs as a married woman while keeping a respectable physical distance from her. The possibility of Bembo’s patronage lies in the hidden presence of his motto in Ginevra’s portrait: In the early 1990s, infrared reflectography revealed the Latin words for “Virtue and Honor,” the personal creed of the Bembo family, painted onto a scroll on the back of the wood panel. These words were later covered up, replaced with a more prominent Latin motto that directly references Ginevra: “Beauty adorns virtue.”
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The similarity between the two mottos and their proximity on the painting’s canvas suggest a sort of spiritual or emotional intimacy between Ginevra and Bembo. The scroll surrounds a juniper sprig, alluding to both Ginevra’s name (“ginepro” is the Italian word for “juniper”) and the plant’s association with moral and intellectual virtue. This sprig, in turn, is nestled between a laurel and a palm—the symbols of the Bembo family.
Writing in the journal Artibus et Historiae in 2006, art historian Mary D. Garrard argued that the key to the portrait’s commission lies in the date of its creation, which is still a matter of debate. If Ginevra de’ Benci was painted to mark its sitter’s engagement or marriage, it must date to around 1474, when the teenager wed Niccolini. If Bembo commissioned the portrait, it likely dates to the late 1470s, when he served as the Venetian ambassador to Florence and selected Ginevra “as the object of his chivalric love,” according to Garrard.
Based on stylistic similarities to other da Vincis from the early 1470s and comparisons with later works, like the Mona Lisa, Garrard proposed that Ginevra de’ Benci was painted between 1473 and 1475, with the original inscription “Virtue and Honor.” The art historian suggested that Bembo, after seeing the portrait, borrowed the motto from Ginevra, adopting it as his own “to consolidate their fictive union.” If that were the case, then it might have been Ginevra, in collaboration with Leonardo, who chose the final inscription, which indicates “that her physical beauty is a mere accessory to her virtue, and not an equally important entity.”
Alternatively, noted the catalog for the National Gallery’s 2001 exhibition on Renaissance women, Ginevra de’ Benci might have been created in two stages, with the front celebrating Ginevra’s marriage “and the reverse, Bembo’s devotion.” The catalog added, “Having already been delivered, the painting would have been retrieved and updated after the circumstances of her life changed, not an uncommon practice in the Renaissance.”
Absent from Ginevra de’ Benci is the warm, tender semi-smile that has made Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, which was painted between 1503 and 1519, so famous. Leonardo’s rendition of Ginevra’s fine features suggests a more somber and thoughtful personality than the Mona Lisa’s. Ginevra doesn’t offer any hint of a smile but rather appears absorbed in deep reflection. She doesn’t invite conversation, instead relaying the message that she is, at present, too occupied to engage with a companion or viewer. Could Ginevra’s indifferent expression be the reason why, over the subsequent centuries, she hasn’t invited as much recognition as her more cheerful successor?
“In the Renaissance, it was not deemed appropriate for women, or men, of the high social class from which she came to be depicted smiling,” says Straussman-Pflanzer. “That was seen as really uncouth.”
While Ginevra de’ Benci didn’t popularize smiling in portraiture, the painting was innovative in many other ways. It was one of the first three-quarter Renaissance portraits of a woman, meaning it showed the sitter’s head and shoulders. “Prior to that, women were only depicted in profile, so Leonardo was definitely aware of this innovation,” Straussman-Pflanzer says. Additionally, Leonardo depicted Ginevra in an outdoor setting rather than confined within the walls of her family home.
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Another mystery surrounding Ginevra de’ Benci is its original composition, which might have featured the sitter’s hands and chest. Scholars believe the portrait was cut down at some point, perhaps after sustaining damage. Leonardo’s Study of a Woman’s Hands, housed at the Royal Collection Trust in England, is widely theorized to be a preparatory sketch for Ginevra’s likeness. In it, the fingers of both hands are bent as if ready to grasp something, perhaps a pen to write with or a bouquet of flowers.
Garrard, however, rejects recreations of the portrait that associate Ginevra with flowers, writing:
Imagining the sitter holding flowers would link her to nature in diminutive terms, casting her in the conventional mold of an attractive girl who aims to please, whose attributes are facets of some man’s identity, whether a bridegroom or lover. No hands or attributes at all, or perhaps a sober parapet, would be more consistent with the simplicity of dress and serious expression that are this particular portrait’s visible features.
By the standards of her day, Ginevra was considered remarkably attractive. Yet she also invited widespread praise during her lifetime for more than just her physical beauty. She’d been brought up with a sophisticated humanist education befitting the Renaissance, which offered new opportunities for women to express themselves and participate in society.
Alongside her adoring Bembo, Ginevra cultivated a circle of scholarly male admirers who found her fascinating and coveted her company. Florence’s de facto ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici, the writer and diplomat Alessandro Braccesi, and the poet and critic Cristoforo Landino all exchanged letters with Ginevra and wrote poems to compliment her many merits.
Corresponding through affectionate letters with male acquaintances was not considered infidelity for a married woman in 15th-century Italy. This was due to the tradition of courtly love as a means for fulfilling emotional desires outside of arranged marriages, which were often coordinated for financial gain and sociopolitical advantage.
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Ginevra was also a talented poet in her own right. Tragically for historians and literary scholars, her poetry does not survive today, except for one striking, thought-provoking line: “I ask your forgiveness and I am a mountain tiger.” These words inspired L.M. Elliott’s 2015 historical novel, Da Vinci’s Tiger, which follows Ginevra’s awakening into maturity as she enters the world of Renaissance high culture and cultivates relationships with both Bembo and Leonardo. She tackles poetry as her great calling and feels a kinship with Leonardo and his own artistic ambitions. Even in the 21st century, Ginevra remains a muse.
As Garrard pointed out, historians have “little surviving evidence of Ginevra’s identity outside that invented for her by Bembo and his friends.” According to Garrard, scholars know that she never had children, “perhaps by choice,” and that she enjoyed a “longstanding relationship” with the Benedictine convent Le Murate, possibly spending time there before her marriage to Niccolini. Based in part on a Lorenzo de’ Medici poem describing Ginevra’s flight from the city, Garrard posited that she withdrew to the convent after several years of marriage, asserting her freedom from the arranged match.
Ginevra died around 1520, in her early 60s, and was buried at Le Murate. Reflecting on her legacy in a 1967 essay, art historian John Walker wrote, “Leonardo da Vinci has given her immortality. The complexities of her character mirrored in her stony, resentful stare, in her grim, unforgiving mouth, will always baffle and enthrall. While her portrait exists, she, too, will exist.”
