“When Flora fair the pleasant tidings bringeth
Of summer sweet with herbs and flowers adorned.”
In our picture the goddess holds a handful of flowers, roses, jessamine and violets, as a sign of her identity. We confess that her type of beauty hardly corresponds to our ideal of Flora. She is a gentle, amiable creature, but not ethereal and poetic enough for the goddess of flowers. Were we to choose a character for her from mythology it would be Juno, the matronly “ox-eyed” goddess, who presided over marriage and whose emblem was the productive pomegranate.
As we compare Flora with the other fair women of our collection, we see that her beauty is of a less elegant and aristocratic type than that of the Bella, and less delicate and refined than that of the Empress Isabella. Her face is perhaps too broad to satisfy a connoisseur of beauty, and she is quite plainly of plebeian caste. Like Lavinia her charm is in the healthy vitality which was the special characteristic of the Venetian beauties of the time. The figure glows with warm pulsing life.
XIV
High on a great marble pedestal, between the stately pillars of a temple, sits the mother Mary with her child Jesus, receiving worshippers. Beyond the pillars is seen the blue sky veiled with fleecy clouds. A tiny cloud has floated within the enclosure, bearing two winged cherubs, who hold a cross between them, hovering over the group below.
The company of worshippers kneel on the tessellated pavement: we see from their dress that they are wealthy Venetians of the sixteenth century. It is the family group of a certain Jacopo Pesaro, who was at that time bishop of Paphos. He is known by the familiar nickname of “Baffo,” and played an important part in Venetian history.
When the Venetians went forth in the New Crusade to attack the Turks, Pesaro or “Baffo” was the commander of the galleys sent by the Borgia pope Alexander VI. The expedition being successful, the bishop wished to show his gratitude for the divine favor. Accordingly, in the course of time, he ordered this picture as a thank-offering commemorative of his victory. He comes with his kinsman Benedetto and other members of his family to consecrate the standards taken from the enemy.