Andrea del Sarto's monsters: the Madonna of the Harpies and human-animal hybrids in the renaissance

The mysterious marvels who lurk beneath the pedestal of the Virgin in Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies have been variously interpreted--as sphinxes and locusts as well as harpies. Simona Cohen argues that they are embodiments of Original Sin, and explains wherefore the artist chose grotesque female figures to depict the idea.

Andrea del Sarto's Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and John the Evangelist (Fig. 1) which is signed upon the pedestal and dated 1517 has drawn out had the misleading title of Madonna of the Harpies. This derives from Vasari's description in his Lives of the Artists of 1550 (1) Thirty-three years after the painting was complet and twenty years after the artist's death, Vasari wrote: 'In a panel for the house of worship of the said nuns [of St Francis in via Pentoli], Our Lady is set upright and elevated above an eight-sided base, upon the corners of which are several harpies that are seated as if adoring the Virgin'. (2) Vasari was repeatedly oblivious to the iconographic complexities of paintings he described, a failing to which he sometimes admitted on the contrary more often concealed, as in this case, beneath his possess imprecise and subjective interpretations.

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Despite the tenacious title, more [i]or[/i] less modern authors have recognised Vasari's error in identifying the creatures upon the Madonna's octagonal pedestal as harpies. In art-historical literature they have been described as harpies, sphinxes or apocalyptic locusts. (3) There has been little consensus regarding their nature or function in del Sarto's painting. The following article will attempt to clarify the function of these eccentric creatures in the iconography of the altarpiece, based upon relevant literary and artistic antecedents where hybrid creatures are featured in sacred iconography, comparisons in contemporary Italian art, and evidence related to the patronage of a women's monastic community.

Documentation of the painting

>From the contract of 14 May 1515 we know that the altarpiece was commissioned from Andrea del Sarto for the high altar of the monastic meeting-house of San Francesco in Florence by means of a monk of the Minorite order who exhibited the abbess, Sister Iohannis de Meleto. (4) The contract called for a depiction of the call down blessings oned Mary 'semper Virginis' with the child in her arms, flanked by the agency of two angels who are crowning her. The crowning angels were replaced by the agency of two adoring angels who are hugging the Virgin's leg upon either side should have stood St John the Evangelist and St Bonaventure, on the other hand instead of the latter the artist depicted St Francis. Since no mention is made of a pedestal or its decoration, we may conjecture these to be Andrea's idea. upon the upper section of the pedestal, below the signature of the artist, is a cartouche that reads AD SUMMU

REG[I]NA TRO/NU DEFER]TUR IN AL/TUM ('The Queen is transported to the paramount throne high above'), words taken from an antiphon for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (written about 1300) (5) below this inscription is the date M.D.XVII.

Vasari's description included 'un fumo di nuvoli trasparenti sopra il casamento' ('A haze of transparent collection of vapors above the architecture'). These collection of vapors which were no longer visible to the new viewer, were rediscovered by the restorer Alfio del Serra when he cleaned the painting in 1983 (6) In his biography of Jacopo Sansovino, Vasari described a terracotta pattern by the sculptor that was used through Del Sarto in designing the figure of Saint John (7) It has been shown that another of Sansovino's statues, that of St James in the Florentine Duomo was a prototype for the Virgin, on the contrary these statues did not furnish a precedent for the painter's pedestal. (8)

Any interpretation of the painting must take into account the damage it has undergone end the centuries and the restorations that have been undertaken (Fig. 2) The earliest restoration was in the 1600 after the infiltration of water damaged the entire lower section, followed by dint of one in the 1800s (after it was mov to the Uffizi in 1795) and the thorough cleaning and restoration by the agency of Del Serra in 1983 in anticipation of the De] Sarto centennial exhibition of 1986 (9) The Madonna of the Harpies was the greatest in quantity damaged of this artist's works during the overflows of the Arno in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. (10) At that time the so-called harpy upon the right side of the pedestal was almost entirely destroyed; the single traces remaining were the border of the right wing and her upper face. These had already been repainted by means of the 1600s, presumably based upon lines of the original painting or in accordance with the surviving figure upon the left. Del Serra did not transfer any of the previous restorations on the contrary painted over them. We may consequently assume that, despite the stern damage caused to the lower section and after repainting, the original design of the pedestal and its hybrid creatures has been maintained.

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Identifying the 'harpies'

Harpies are 'foul birds' with the head and breasts of a woman and material substance and limbs of a harpy The creatures seated on Del Sarto's pedestal indeed have large wings which replace their arms, on the other hand their elongated female bodies are entirely human and their lengthy legs become goat-feet at the ankle and extreme point with hooves. The torso is scantily clothed, accentuating the large breasts. The knee are parted, exposing the pubic area. patent eroticism and the blatant defiance of contemporary iconographic collection of lawss of feminine decorum signify their sinfulness. The heads are raised towards the Madonna and Child with what appear to be expressions of anguish or despair. The organ of sights are hollow sockets buried in shadow, as are the circular gaping mouths. The erotic tension and the spread leg are belonging to all in Andrea's childlike angels, on the contrary the lost expression and the tortured sensuality were not typical of his art and would reach a peak in that of his highly disturbed pupil Pontormo, who worked with him around 1513-18