Guelphs and Ghibellines

Painting height: 320 cm
Painting width: 259.1 cm
Frame height: 352 cm
Frame width: 291 cm

This grand historical fresco-like painting depicts a scene from 13th century Florence now quite unfamiliar to modern audiences. It shows the moment when the Guelph nobleman Buondelmonte, who was betrothed to a daughter of the Ghibelline house of Amidei, fell in love with another woman of the family of Donati. This fateful act was considered an unforgivable offense by the Ghibelline families of Florence. According to the account in Giovanni Villani’s (c. 1276 or 1280- 1348) Chronicles Buondelmonte paid for it with his life. The events were also referred to in Dante Alighieri’s (c. 1265-1321) Inferno Canto XVI, the first part of the epic Divine Comedy.

Watts’s painting has its origins, and was likely begun, during his visit to Italy between 1843 and 1847 when he stayed at Lord Holland’s house at Florence. As Watts’s friend the art historian wrote of Watts’s four years in Italy, he ‘always looked back to the visit which he paid to Italy…as the great opportunity of his life’ [1]. Katerine Gaja speculates the subject may have been suggested by Giovanbattista Niccolini, the Secretary of the Academia delle Belle Arti [2]. Moreover, this painting is said to have inspired Buondelmonte’s Wedding (1859) by Edward Burne-Jones, who is thought to have seen it in 1858 when staying at Little Holland House [3]. It is highly likely that he did see this painting as it can be seen in the background of Watts’s portrait of Alice Prinsep at the piano (1860) [4].

The painting also suggests the civil strife that would follow in the dog being trampled by the horse and woman begging in the street who sits crying over her child. According to Giovanni Villani the conflict plagued Florentine society for thirty-three years.

Footnotes:

[1] Katerine Gaja, G. F. Watts in Italy: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Pocket Library of Studies in Art, vol. 29, 1995), pp. 127-128, p. 67. Watts also found inspiration in Dante Alighieri for one of his most famous pictures Paolo and Francesca (COMWG.83, 1872-1875). Another possible inspiration, or at least an indication of the subject’s popularity at the time, is the contemporary novel The Glee-singers; or, the Guelphs and Ghibellines. A Tale of Florence in the 13th Century that was serialised in The Metropolitan Magazine between 1844-1845.

[2]  Stephen Wildman and John Christian, ‘7. Buondelmonte’s Wedding’ in Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), pp. 60-60, p. 60.

[3]  Julia Cartwright, ‘George Frederic Watts’ in The Monthly Review (Aug 1904), pp. 23-40, p. 26. Incidentally, Cartwright reports that among the many celebrities, intellectuals, and authors who Watts met during this stay was Charles Dickens. Dickens was in Italy to write his travelogue Pictures from Italy (1846).

[4]  As first noted by Hilary Underwood. See the photograph of this painting by Frederic Hollyer (COMWG2007.750, 1860).

Text by Dr Eva-Charlotta Mebius