Leda

Tosini Michele called Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio

(Florence 1503 - 1577)

The panel, documented with certainty in the Borghese collection since 1833, was painted by Michele Tosini in pendant with another half-figure depicting Lucretia (inv. 322). This picture represents Leda, the mythical queen of Sparta, here portrayed in a half-length three-quarter pose, in the company of a swan. Legend has it that having fallen in love with her, Zeus turned into this noble bird who managed to seduce the beautiful queen who, after a few days, laid an egg from which Helen and Pollux were born.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this painting remains uncertain. According to a hypothesis by Kristina Herrmann Fiore (Ead. 2005), the painting entered the Pincian collection in 1787, the year in which the outstanding collection of the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi was put up for sale. Among the possessions the artist sold to the Borghese family were two half-figures, namely ‘a Juno and a Leda by Pierin del Vaga’ (see doc. 95 in Della Pergola 1959, p. 225; Campitelli 1994, p. 56), identified by critics with this Leda and its pendant, the Lucrezia (inv. 322), the latter erroneously described as a Juno (Herrmann Fiore 2005).

Apart from this hypothesis, currently the only and earliest certain information regarding this work dates to 1833, when the painting is mentioned in the fideicommissum lists under the name of Giorgio Vasari (Inventario Fidecommissario 1833). This attribution, repeated in Giovanni Piancastelli’s files (1891) and Adolfo Venturi’s catalogue (1893), was discarded both by Voss (Id. 1920), who was more inclined towards an attribution to Francesco Brina, and by Carlo Gamba (Id. 1929), who convincingly thought of the Florentine artist Michele di Ridolfo whose style, influenced by the classical painting of Frà Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto, was reinterpreted in the light of his collaboration with Giorgio Vasari. This interpretation, welcomed by Frederik Antal (Id. 1951) and Roberto Longhi (Id. 1928), was also accepted without reservation by Paola della Pergola (Ead. 1959) who, in the catalogue of the Galleria Borghese paintings, published the two pictures as autograph works by Tosini, comparing them for the first time with the female heads in the Uffizi (see Gamba 1929) and with The Night from the Galleria Colonna in Rome, a painting that blends Vasari’s lively style with Michelangelo’s anatomical expertise.

Confirming the Tosini attribution, unanimously supported by critics, Giovanna Rotondi Terminello (Ead. 1966) published an Ecce Homo found in the Parish House of Uscio, a painting that conforms to the two Borghese pictures in the roundness of the eyes, the graphic definition of the mouth and the papery folds of the headpieces. Considering these similarities, the scholar proposed dating the two Borghese femmes around the 1560s, a period when the Florentine painter was working alongside Vasari on the bastions of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Indeed, this connection with the Arezzo painter, a sign of his reconciliation with mannerist culture (see Prosperi Valenti 1974), was the basis of a second maniera of his, especially visible in his paintings from between the 1550s and 1560s, as well as in his production of female half-figures, including the two Borghese panels and numerous portraits (Meloni Trkulja 1994).

As Herrmann Fiore (Ead. 2005) well explains, this Leda, not unlike the Lucretia, is a masterpiece of Florentine painting of the 1560s, whose beauty, elegance and monumentality are enhanced by the soft fairness of the flesh tones, by the rendering of the fabrics and jewellery, as well as by the elaborate hairstyle that indicates a clear knowledge of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s drawings (Uffizi, no. 598r; see Herrmann Fiore 2005). In addition, the close-up view of the half-length bust, with her back turned to the viewer, would reveal a certain familiarity with Veneto painting, here blending with a masterful handling of colour, close to the models of Francesco Salviati. However, the idea of interpreting this subject without indulging in the more sensual and erotic tones that had been common up to that time, may suggest its execution could date to further towards the end of the 1560s, when the effects of Counter-Reformation had already successfully taken root.

The work, in fact, seems to embody Giorgio Vasari’s description of Tosini and his principles (‘what I like the most about him, apart from the fact that he is truly a good man, virtuous and God-fearing, is that he always has in his workshop a good number of boys whom he teaches with incredible care; Vasari 1568, ed. 1964, pp. 340, 389), an aspect that was certainly highly appreciated by the moralists of the time and that duly inspired the painter to opt for a careful and measured execution of this heroine, here portrayed with her legendary lover – Zeus in the guise of a swan – tenderly kissing her cheek, a far cry from the ancient accounts transposed in painting by Michelangelo and sculpted by Ammannati.

Antonio Iommelli