(c) 2015 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

(c) 2010 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

The Story of Lucretia

painter Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1444 or 1445 - 1510, Florence)

Dateabout 1500

Place MadeFlorence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe

MediumTempera and oil on panel

Dimensions83.8 x 176.8 cm (33 x 69 5/8 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Accession numberP16e20

eMuseum ID723125

EmbARK ObjectID10986

TMS Source ID244

Last Updated10/29/24

Status

Not on view

Web CommentaryAccording to legend, Lucretia’s brutal rape and tragic suicide precipitated the foundation of the Roman Republic. Botticelli distilled Lucretia’s shocking story into three episodes, beginning at the left. Beautiful and chaste, she attracts the unwanted attention of the king’s son, who threatens Lucretia at knifepoint with sexual assault or a dishonorable death. Raped, she collapses in shame before her outraged family, depicted at the right, and ultimately commits suicide. The public display of Lucretia’s corpse galvanized the rebels led by Brutus. Brandishing a sword, he rallies an army to overthrow the corrupt regime. The architectural setting of the rebellion remakes the past into the present, likening ancient Rome to Renaissance Florence. Botticelli transformed Lucretia’s body—dagger embedded in her chest—into an emblem of liberty, like the biblical hero and Florentine icon David, who stands on the column above her.

Botticelli painted this work to decorate a palace in Florence in connection with a marriage. Perhaps with this in mind, Isabella Gardner placed a cassone, or wedding chest, beneath it. The Renaissance bride filled her cassone with prized and personal belongings—linens, undergarments, jewelry, cosmetics, and sewing implements. Mrs. Gardner draped a velvet textile (now a reproduction) over this cassone and put inside other textiles and an eighteenth-century guitar.

BibliographyNotes

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ProvenanceNotesProbably commissioned for Giovanni di Guidantonio Vespucci (1476–1534) and Namicina di Benedetto Nerli at Casa Vespucci, Via de' Servi, Florence, about 1500. (as part of a spalliere)
Purchased by the patrician Piero Salviati in 1533. (as part of the purchase of Casa Vespucci)
By descent to Lucrezia Salviati and her husband, the musician, writer and scientist Giovanni de Bardi di Vernio, after 1568 until about 1584.
Collection of Bertram Ashburnham, 5th Earl of Ashburnham (1840–1913), Ashburnham Place, Sussex by 1894.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from Bertram Ashburnham, London for £3400 on 19 December 1894 through the American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959).