Giorgio Vasari's Allegory of Patience on display in Florence

The Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti in Florence is organizing an exhibition focusing on one of the most significant paintings in the Medici collections, the Allegoryof Patience, now kept in the Prometheus Room, and belonging to Cardinal Leopold de Medici.

The work, assigned to Parmigianino in the inventories of Palazzo Pitti, catalogued in the first museum guides under the name of Francesco Salviati, later attributed to Girolamo Siciolante by Federico Zeri and today recognized as the fruit of collaboration between Giorgio Vasari and the Spaniard Gaspar Becerra, has a complex collecting history, involving some important figures linked to the court of Cosimo I and Giorgio Vasari himself.

In fact, it was Bernardetto Minerbetti, bishop of Arezzo and ambassador of Cosimo I, as well as a fine man of letters and patron of the Accademia degli Umidi, who asked the Aretine, shortly after 1550, for a painting that would represent in a new and emblematic way the main virtue of his character, namely the art of Patience. Vasari accepted, proposing to his patron aninvention inspired by ancient statuary, enriched by a refined symbolic repertoire allusive to time and human life. And so takes shape the invention of a young woman bound by a chain to a rock, patiently waiting for the necessary drops to gush from the water vase to corrode the stone, restoring her freedom. This erudite and highly cultured image would garner great acclaim far beyond the borders of Florence, soon reaching the Ferrara court of Hercules II dEste, who did not hesitate to make his own enterprise out of it. In fact, within a few years of the painting for Minerbetti, Duke Ercole II dEste commissioned a new version of Patience from Camillo Filippi, to be destined for the so-called Room of Patience in the Santa Caterina tower of the Ferrarese castle. The duke also had the same personification introduced on the reverse of a famous medal struck by Pompeo Leoni in 1554, on the base of a bust of him sculpted by Prospero Sogari Spani, and in a series of coins minted by the Ferrara mint.

But why was Vasari’s invention so successful? And why was the virtue of Patience considered so important in the art and literature of the mid-Renaissance?

The exhibition, curated by Anna Bisceglia as well as the catalog published by Sillabe, investigates these questions by following the thread of commissions, literary sources, and artists’ paths, against the complex and fascinating background of the Italy of the courts. Next to the Allegory ofPatience is the version of the same theme executed by Camillo Filippi and conserved at the Galleria Estense in Modena (c. 1554), from which also comes the bust of Hercules II sculpted by Prospero Sugari (c. 1556), on whose base the same virtue is effigyed, and the medals by Pompeo Leoni also for the Duke (Florence, Bargello, c. 1558). Next to these, to illustrate the iconographic motif in its complex genesis, a large panel from the Venice Academy is planned. It is part of a wooden compartmented ceiling executed for the Corner family in 1542; also the small panel from the Uffizi, mistakenly known as Artemisia weeping Mausolo, but which must be recognized instead as a Pazienza, some drawings and engravings from the Gabinetto Disegni e stampe in Florence and the Cabinet del Dessins du Louvre.

The exhibition will be open from Nov. 26, 2013 to Jan. 5, 2014. More information on the Polo Museale Fiorentino website.

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