''Allegory'' is a painting mostly attributed to
Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. In the past it was usually attributed to the Italian Renaissance master
Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi (April 1457 – 18 April 1504) was an Italian painter working in Florence, Italy during the later years of the Early Renaissance and first few years of the High Renaissance.
Biography
Filippino Lippi was born in Prato, Tusc ...
, executed around 1498. It is now in the
Uffizi Gallery
The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...
of
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
. The work had been variously assigned, to
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
, one of the
Ghirlandaio Ghirlandaio is the surname of a family of Renaissance Italian painters:
* Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), painter of fresco cycles and Michelangelo's teacher
* Davide Ghirlandaio (1452–1525), younger brother of Domenico
* Benedetto Ghirlandai ...
family, or an unknown 15th century painter.
Description
The scene is set on a hill, with Florence in the background. It features a man, whose legs are tied by a serpent, who closes to an aged one, dressing in red and sitting near a tree. The latter is holding several lightnings. Next to the walking man is a small
stoat, a symbol of purity.
The same character, with the serpent getting out from his jacket and looking at him, has fallen in the foreground. An inscription gets out from his mouth, saying ''NULLA DETERIOR PESTIS QUAM FAMILIARIS INIMICUS'' ("Nothing is more dangerous than a family's enemy") and going towards the old man.
The subject has been variously interpreted: as the story of
Laocoön, an allegory of two enemy brothers, or, more likely, of the civil wars that followed the fall of
Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. The last version is supported by the fact that, in Renaissance art, the presence of a well defined city (Florence in this case) had always a meaning. The man dressing in red would be God or Jupiter; in the latter case, the man nearing him would be nearing paganism, the serpent being a symbol of the Devil making him stumble later.
External links
Page at the Florence Museums website
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Paintings by Filippino Lippi
1490s paintings
Paintings in the Uffizi
15th-century allegorical paintings
Allegorical paintings by Italian artists
Snakes in art