An Allegory of Patience

(Giovanni Maria Butteri)

This Allegory of Patience was almost certainly a picture painted for Francesco de Medici for one of his private rooms. The compositions largely follows the ideal described by Vasari when writing to Bishop Minerbetti of Arezzo in 155 “Patience should be neither completely dressed nor totally undressed” (this was to show the balance between richness and poverty. “Patience should have one foot chained”, (this was in order not to affect a more noble part of the body), “and waits until the water dropping from an old water clock should consume the rock to which the chain is forged” The figure also holds many other symbolic time symbols such as the young olive twig sprouting from the cut trunk of the tree which refers to old Cosimo I de Medici, the first Grand Duke, because he stemmed from another branch of the Medici family when the elder branch had become extinct. The device of the olive bough sprouting from the trunk is Virgilian in origin, namely that if you cut one branch, a new one always grows to replace it.

Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, Rome and Dr. Armando Buresti, Florence

R Wittkower, Patience & Chance: The Story of a Political Emblem, Journal of the Warburg Institute 1937 – 38, vol. 1, page 171 FF