Cassandra Fedele, 1869. Watercolour and gouache on paper,30 ¼ x 20 ¾ inches (76.6 x 52.8 cm). Collection of Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, registration no. 409. Click on image to enlarge it.
As well as being a poet and musician, Cassandra Fedele was the most esteemed female scholar in Italy during the last decades of the Quattrocento. She was born in Venice in 1465 to Angelo Fedele and Barbara Leoni. Her father took a great interest in her learning. At the age of twelve, after Cassandra had reached fluency in Greek and Latin, she was tutored in classical literature, philosophy, and the sciences by Gasparino Borro, a Servite monk. In 1487, at the age of twenty-two, she achieved her initial fame in Italy and abroad when she delivered a speech in Latin in praise of the arts and sciences at her cousin's graduation at Padua. Her speech, Oratio pro Bertucio Lamberto, was published in Modena in 1487, Venice in 1488, and Nuremberg in 1489. From 1487 to 1497 she exchanged letters with prominent humanists and nobility throughout Italy and Spain.
Fedele achieved fame through her writing, her oratorical abilities, and her beauty and simple elegance. It is believed that she wrote Latin poetry, although none is known to have survived. She took part in public debates on philosophical and theological issues with influential humanists and was asked to address the doge Agostino Barbarigo and the Venetian Senate on the subject of higher education for women. Fedele's success, however, was short lived. The majority of her scholarly activities occurred between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-three, just prior to her marriage at age thirty-four in 1499. Fedele largely abandoned her active participation in intellectual pursuits after she was married, as was the case for most learned women of her day in a society that opposed the scholarly participation of married women. In 1520 her physician husband Giammaria Mapelli died leaving her a widow, childless, and in financial straits. In 1547 Pope Paul III appointed her as prioress of an orphanage at the church of San Domenico di Castello in Venice where she resided until her death. It is speculated that Fedele continued to read and write in private after her marriage and during her years of widowhood, not for praise and honour, but purely for the enjoyment and solace that such intellectual pursuits could provide. Cassandra Fedele was mentioned as “the most learned woman in the world” in the novel Romola by Burton’s friend George Eliot, which was perhaps his inspiration to paint this subject.
The finished watercolour of Cassandra Fedele in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin. A cartoon in black chalk is in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, while an early pencil drawing is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Information from the Hugh Lane Gallery about the finished watercolour suggests that
lthough Cassandra Fedele is dated 1869, Burton's notes reveal that he had begun working on this subject three years previously. It is an excellent example of his sensitive handling of colour and meticulous drawing. The range of white tones in the sleeve is remarkable and in his use of blues and purples to create shadow Burton anticipates the Impressionists. A full-scale cartoon for this in the National Gallery of Ireland shows how carefully Burton developed his ideas - softening the background, overcoming the clumsiness of the hand plucking the strings by the provision of a bow, and adding a chair on the right to balance the composition. The subject is not, as one might suppose at first, the Cassandra of Greek myth, but a famous Venetian poetess and musician of the 16th century. She is elevated to the status of the ancients by her crown of laurel, which links her, like her Greek namesake, with Apollo. Burton ranks her with those other heroines of ancient legend whose portrait medallions in the classical frieze in the background: Penelope, faithful wife of Odysseus; Judith who slew Holofernes and saved her people; Lucretia who chose death rather than life with dishonour after she had been raped by Tarquin, and Sofonisba, who may either be the princess of Carthage during the Punic Wars or Sofonisba Anguiscuola, the woman artist whose talent earned a name as esteemed as Cassandra Fedele in 16th century Italy. The statues of the saints in the niches and the pelican and lion above them remind us that this Cassandra is both Christian and Venetian. Burton had in 1849 painted a charming, simple portrait of his friend, the actress, Helen Faucit as Antigone (National Gallery of Ireland). Cassandra Fedele is very sophisticated and complex by comparison. It is Burton's response to Rossetti's Elizabeth Siddal as Beata Beatrix”. [159]
Although it may be an overstatement to claim that the finished watercolour is ”Burton's response to Rossetti's Elizabeth Siddal as Beata Beatrix”, there is no doubt that the finished work, as well as the known studies, have been influenced by the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. This is particularly true of the 1860s period where Venetian High Renaissance influences are prominent in the work of artists such as D. G. Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Frederick Sandys, G. F. Watts, and Val Prinsep.
Another important contemporary influence on this particular watercolour is Frederic Leighton’s series of oil paintings of Nanna Risi executed in Rome in 1858-59. These were shown at the Royal Academy in 1859 and the International Exhibition at South Kensington of 1862. This is particularly the case with the largest of the paintings, entitled La Nanna, which is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was influenced by the work of Pontormo. Portraits by Mannerist late Renaissance artists appear to have been less an influence on Burton than Leighton, however, because the richness of the handling in the final watercolour is definitely more comparable to Venetian Renaissance painting by artists such as Titian. Cassandra Fedele’s significance as muse of Venice is indicated by the laurel leaves worn around her head. On the background wall curtained bookshelves are flanked by saints George and Sebastian in niches, below a frieze of heads of virtuous women. Cassandra Fedele’s costume, with its heavy sleeves, is loosely derived from Venetian Renaissance dress. If one compares the early preliminary drawing at the National Gallery of Canada to the cartoon at the National Gallery of Ireland, and finally to the finished watercolour at the Hugh Lane Gallery, one can follow the evolution of the final composition, particularly how the artist resolves the awkwardness of the placement of the hands in the initial sketch, and the development of her final costume.
When the finished watercolour was shown at the Old Water-Colour Society exhibition in 1869 it was favourably reviewed as one of the principal works in the exhibition. The Art Journal praised it, judging
the picture of most thought and subtlety [to be] Mr. Burton’s ‘Cassandra Fedele,’ to which the catalogue gives from M. Rio’s ‘Poésie Chretienne,’ the following explanatory note: ‘Elle était devenue pour les Vénitiens une espèce de Muse Nationale.’ The figure, as the Muse of poetry and music, stands in momentary meditation, or, as it were, in rapt reverie, awaiting inspiration. The sensitive fingers are about to evoke melody from the instrument in her hands; before her lies in suggestion a volume of poems, whereunto this second Corinna will improvise eloquent accompaniment. The whole concept is elevated as the Art is consummate. The face wears the expression of deep emotion; the attitude of the figure has grace, yet dignity; the costume is picturesque, and in treatment skilful; and the whole composition has been brought together studiously, by light and shade well balanced, and a colour delicately blended and diffused between the figure and the background. Altogether the work rises out from routine, and reaches the elevated walks which few painters care to venture to tread. [173]
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum wrote: “The most valuable paintings must be considered first. Of these none surpasses a large, unfinished drawing by Mr. F. W. Burton, Cassandra Fedele (No. 20) – a half-length representation of a famous Venetian musician, who standing before a music-rest, appears bay-crowned, white-robed, with blue fillets on her hair and dress, and holding a viol and bow. Incomplete as this picture is, its shortcoming seems to us only where the last efforts of a master are needed, as they are promised, in removing from the features those traces of portraiture which have been derived from a beautiful model and nobly idealizing their forms and character; otherwise the picture, for such it is in the truest sense, is deliciously wealthy in tones and colour and perfectly in keeping, having withal extraordinary dignity, grace, beauty, and power in painting. The honour of the Society was never better sustained than by this work” (611). Only The Illustrated London News failed to be impressed with Burton’s contribution this year: “Mr. Burton’s ‘Cassandra Fedele’ (20), with which, as already implied, we confess to be disappointed, making reasonable allowance for its ‘unfinished’ condition. Neither in the proportions and contour of the neck and other parts of the figure, nor in the scheme and quality of the preparatory painting, do we find promise of the draughtsmanship and colouring which the artist has taught us to expect…But the gesture and expression are stiff and slightly affected rather than ennobled by poetic dignity; and the type is certainly too commonplace for a romantic idealization” (471).
Bibliography
“Images and Insights.” Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane (1993) 59.
“Society of Painters in Water-Colours.” The Art Journal New Series 8 (1869): 173-174.
Stephens, Frederic George. “Society of Painters in Water-Colours.” The Athenaeum No. 2166 (May 1, 1869): 611.
“Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours.” The illustrated London News 54 (May 9, 1869): 471-474
Last modified 13 April 2022