Editor’s Note

Abstract

This issue opens with a Florentine wedding and speculations on its mysterious host (Judith Bryce’s “Decoding Codename 16”). The Berenson collection features several works related to weddings, but the one that particularly caught my eye features trumpeters, coy maidens, dejected suitors, and a haggard looking husband-to-be: Francesco Botticini’s Sposalizio della Vergine (fig. 1). What’s more, it was painted for a church in Florence—San Felice in Piazza on the Oltrarno— some five years before the marriage ceremony discussed by Bryce. And even though in 1918 Bernard Berenson thought the panel he had recently purchased was by the Perugian painter Giovanni Boccati, he cited the plausibility of earlier arguments attributing it to Fra Angelico, given that “much . . . in the composition suggests Florence.” Botticini’s Marriage of the Virgin may indeed be reminiscent of Florentine weddings and sites, and not simply because Botticini was Florentine. The seven pillars may look to the library of San Marco designed by Michelozzo, the same architect behind the Renaissance facade of the church where Botticini’s work was once housed. The trumpeters themselves, awash in red and by far the most colorful members of the wedding party (although Mary’s now-gray dress was once a glowing purple, as Laurence Kanter notes) were staples at Florentine ceremonies. The painting features a daring asymmetry—the space behind Joseph is much more crowded and busier than the comparatively vacant space occupied by Mary’s calm handmaidens—and at least one tantalizing puzzle: of the four doors that line the room, the one to Mary’s right is slightly ajar. Perhaps it’s out of carelessness, or perhaps it’s a sign of the opening into a new life for Mary and her husband— and for all future Christians. But Botticini seems to make this moment more solemn than festive, judging from Joseph's concentrated expression and Mary's modest demeanor as she shuts her eyes. (The jilted male suitors, two of whom are seen breaking their rods, would no doubt describe the occasion differently.)