Instytut Sztuki (Warschau) [Hrsg.]; Państwowy Instytut Sztuki (bis 1959) [Hrsg.]; Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki [Hrsg.]: Biuletyn Historii Sztuki (67.2005)

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Anna Boczkowska

acknowledge as coincidental, may be understood to
relate in this unprecedented form to the popular at
that time concept devised by Ficino of 'Twin
Venuses' (Geminae Veneres), which became almost
at the same time the subject for the previously men-
tioned painting by Titian.
We may thus consider it our right to assume that
the Venus caelestis in the upper level above the altar
was depicted in accordance with the genetrix type,
among flora and cupids (ills. 1, 5). She was, after all,
compared by neo-Platonists to the virtue of Caritas,
and, most importantly, as a 'heavenly body' Sancta Dei
Genetrix, personifying amore divino, santissimo, vero.
In the figure of the goddess taking the pudica
form, placed at the lower level in the Chapel, we see,
nevertheless, the terrestrial, or natural, Venus. She
was depicted in accordance with the pudica form by
Botticelli in the famous birth scene, which, as Ficino
wrote: 'foretold the generation and regeneration of
all things in nature, resting in a secret state in the
First Cause'. In the perspective of neo-Platonic phi-
losophy, in which the notion of original sin was re-
placed by that of imperfection, the snake, coiling
around the temporal Venus's left arm in the Chapel,
thus appears as a popular symbol of earth, usually
accompanying the divinities of vegetation and abun-
dance, testifying to her belonging to the lowest ma-
teriał domain of nature, subject like the element to
incessant change in the cycle of death, birth and re-
generation. She does not appear, therefore, as a sym-
bol of satanic forces, but as a creation belonging to
the world of nature - just like all other divine crea-
tions, very active, ambiguous by definition, capable
of encompassing double values: good and bad, death
and rebirth, as for example in the portrait of Piero di
Cosimo's portrait of the prematurely deceased
Simonette Vespucci. The snake entwines itself
around her neck, recalling to mind the Roman cus-
tom of carrying snakes, which were recognised as
guardian spirits to homes, temples and virgins,
coiled around necks and arms. The medicinal asso-
ciation also originates from antiquity.
Snakes as Greco-Roman attributes of temporal
gods and abundance, symbols of time and eternity
were depicted also in a frieze from the portico of the
Medicis' villa at Poggio a Caiano, where cupids
were depicted flying out of the belly of Mother Earth
belonging to the same group of personifications as
the 'Twin Yenuses' in the Sigismund Chapel.
Here we encounter the phenomenon of secularised
religious symbols and the transforming of their inner
contents, as occurred under the influence of studies
carried out by humanists on the religions and cults of
the antique world.
The two figures of Venus do not, therefore, ex-
press in the Chapel a contrast between good and evil,

but, in accordance with the message of neo-Platonism,
harmonious collaboration between the cosmic forces
controlling the world of nature, as manifested in two
figures of two differing degrees of perfection. The
relief ornamentation adorning its walls with an un-
precedented horror vacui evoke in the visual lan-
guage of antiquity the abundant and beautiful area of
nature as ruled by the 'natural' Venus, who partici-
pated - as Ficino defined it - 'in the rapturous clean-
liness of the celestial Venus'. A rich repertoire of
arabesque and grotesque-candelarbrum ornamenta-
tion composed of floral motifs linked with others
belonging to the world of fauna, as well as mytho-
logical creatures and divinities which were to deliver
the Chapel's founder, king Sigismund I, back to the
world of Homer, Plato and Virgil.
We may find confirmation of Ficino's symbol-
ism of the celestial and terrestrial Venus in a scene
depicted in the stylobate of the Chapel's altar wall,
where reference is made to the antique motif of the
struggle between Eros and his brother Anteros for
the palm branch, finding its way into Renaissance
and Baroque art and known, among other things,
from a relief housed in the Museo Nazionale of Na-
ples (ills. 11, 12). This motif, recognised at the start
of the 16th century, on the basis of a reference by
Pausanias as an allegory to amore reciproco, was
transformed in the neo-Platonic spirit into an alle-
gory of a battle for dominance between amore di-
vino as personified by Anteros, considered to be the
domain of the celestial Venus, and amore profano,
portrayed in the person of Eros, son of Venus. The
outcome of this struggle was interpreted in various
ways. In the pictures of Giovanni Baglione and
Agostino Carracci, Anteros succeeds in smashing
Eros to the ground. In the Chapel, however, both
stand opposite each other in an identical pose, remi-
niscent of the relief adorning the tomb of Basso della
Rovere in the Roman church of Santa Maria del
Popolo, by Sansovino (ill. 13). The ideal balancing
of forces between the two combatants reflects the
harmony as postulated by Platonists between the two
forms of love.
Nevertheless, a motif of significance was de-
picted in the middle section of the northern wall arch
above the entrance, between the pairs of sphinxes
(ill. 16). These latter are recognised not only as sym-
bols of mysterious oriental knowledge and illumi-
nated truths, but also methods of their programmatic
camouflaging. In his Apologia Pico della Mirandola
wrote that the sphinxes guarding Egyptian temples
recalled the secrets of divine wisdom, which, if they
are to be revealed at all, this could only be in a coded
manner, 'hermetic', difficult to understand for the
uninitiated. Pairs of sphinxes accompanied the fig-
ure of maidens personifying Philosophy on