Simonetta

by Fay Picardi

Have you ever wondered about who Botticelli chose to depict in his immortal painting Birth of Venus? Was she a real person, his model or his mistress? Most people recognize her image, but few can name her. Even fewer know her personal story. Do you know that her liaisons with the Medici family at the height of the Italian Renaissance caused such a sensation that the intrigue endures today? That Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote love poems to her? That Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet? After years of research, poet and author Fay Picardi carefully unveils the captivating narrative portrait of this fascinating woman and adds enough detail that the reader feels as if he or she is inhabiting Florence during the period of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

262 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2015

About the author

Fay Picardi grew up in rural Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia. She has studied and taught in France, and has spent many months in Italy. She has been a teacher, an interior designer and an amateur artist, as well as a writer.

Fay has twice been selected as an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts as well as a Summer Fellow in Poetry at the University of Virginia.

Fay loves art, travel and learning about almost anything, especially other cultures and religions. Her work draws from her childhood in Kentucky, her year in France as a young teacher and her frequent travels to Europe, often to France and Italy. She frequently experiments in various artistic techniques and is a member of The Pieces of Eight art group. In the past, she has worked extensively in interior design. She has two daughters, four grandchildren and, when not traveling, she lives in Florida with her husband.

Reviews

[Kirre Ranin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is something when a book makes the effort to be as historically accurate as possible, since history itself can be so intriguing, yet this book does not capture one’s attention as it should.

While reading this book, it felt like I was given a lot of information, and very little of plot. The story is essentially of Simonetta Vespucci, the La Bella of Florence during the Italian Renaissance, on her last days being sick, and her recalling or speaking about the past to Constanta “Consi”, her maid and other people who come to visit her. It is essentially trying to encompass a single life into a couple of days with a lot of exposition. There is also the addition of the romance between Giuliano de’ Medici and Simonetta Vespucci, which seems the most inaccurate thing in the book, and the plot is essentially Simonetta waiting for Giuliano de’ Medici to come to her. She also dreams about his assassination which happens a couple of years later.

Because all of this information comes from letters and monologues in her mind from Simonetta we do not get a full portrait of the people she is speaking about, and there are things implied and inferred, but which essentially lead to nowhere. It is well written, not the most mind blowing stuff, and the constant change of fonts did hurt my head at first until I got used to it.

What we see in this book is a portrait of a small life, cut short at the age of twenty-three by illness. There are fragments of Simonetta’s life which we know about, because men wrote and Botticelli painted her in his canvas. She sees these men as friends, though her father-in-law is a creep, but it does not come into anything in the book. We also get the usual bad marriage between her and Marco Vespucci, and her longing for love in the courtly love way with Giuliano.

What I feel like is a missed opportunity is showing her being beautiful is something Simonetta sees as a burden or if she is even vain in the first place. She has learned to be tactful with men, not giving them an inch, while still being friendly, but she never comments on those ideas in the book. What does she think about all the men in her life seeing her as anything but a beauty, but not the complete person (apart from Giuliano)? She writes poetry, but we never see if those letters or poems are destroyed or if it is just implied they disappear with time, as they have historically, since we do not have anything written by Simonetta Vespucci in the modern day.

I just wished the book would have had a proper plot or shown in vignettes the story of Simonetta, instead of having her recall it all on her deathbed. It seems a bit lazy, and does not give the author enough chances to show off their skill with the history they have learned. It is as if it was too hard to write those scenes, so they had to be recalled in bits and pieces later on. It felt boring to read, since there was essentially so much exposition, and did not let me completely immerse myself in the world of the book or in Renaissance Italy. There was also so much explaining going on, that the prose did not make all the information seem worthwhile reading.

Though it is admirable that Picardi wanted to write a story about a woman who is most famously famous for her beauty and her dying young, there is no analysis on how such things could affect someone who knows she is only famous and loved because of her beauty. The book could have gone deeper, much deeper, but since it is made out of fragments of someone’s life from other sources there is a kind of superficiality to it all. It is certainly an attempt to get to the facts of someone’s life, but it just was not interesting reading, since it also falls to the trope of having Giuliano and Simonetta be lovers. He most certainly had affection for her, but what about her? What does she think about men falling in love with her constantly? In her death she does not think about that. She only thinks of Giuliano, not her family or parents. The love story eclipses all. Mostly it just felt like I was reading facts, interesting ones, but things that could have been much better written and structured into a better story. I admire the historical accuracy, yet it feels like one does not seem to get a full portrait of a life. Simonetta never gets angry, she never has revelations other than love, she writes poetry but has no ambitions for it, and so much more. She is made out of facts, fragments, yet still after reading this story I feel like I got facts, but not a picture of someone with the full emotional range or self-awareness. She is just a beautiful woman, even more beautiful in death, made for a consuming audience who loves dead, beautiful women; which is why she is famous in the first place. Not for her character, though she was said to be kind and good, and nothing she made for herself, and so this is an imagined Simonetta we are seeing in this story. She speaks for herself in this book, this is her story, but there is no commentary on analysis on her life within her story, which would have been made for a nice commentary on how dead, beautiful women are seen as better in society compared to those who have been seen as rebellious.