The elegant hieroglyph of the eyes belonging to the Griffoni polyptych by Francesco del Cossa represents an unusual iconographic theme. Saint Lucia is the character who holds a palm branch in his right hand and a not-at-all-truculent pair of detached and flowery eyes in his left.
A canvas with a troubled life. Attributed to Cosmè Tura until 1906, it was then returned to Francesco del Cossa (1436-1478) by the art critic Adolfo Venturi. In the first half of the eighteenth century, some antique dealers cut and detached the figures from the largest polyptych, that of Del Cossa. But legend has it that the crime was perpetrated in the 17th century by a member of the Aldovrandi family who had purchased the painting from the Griffoni patrons, Cardinal Pompeo Aldovrandi. From that moment, the history of the polyptych ceases, and the separate history of the various saints begins.
Nowadays, the individual canvas of Griffoni polyptych are broken up in museums worldwide. For instance, the slice of Santa Lucia is at National Gallery in London. It seems plausible that Francesco del Cossa painted the complicated major altarpiece in collaboration with a young painter, Ercole de Roberti, who had followed del Cossa when he left Ferrara.
Both del Cossa and de Roberti, together with Cosmè Tura, were the learned artists who embellished the walls of Palazzo Schifanoia. This leisure building belonged to the d’Este family, the lords of Ferrara. The months applied to the walls are widely known for their profound and enigmatic knowledge. In fact, these frescoes – slightly damaged by the 2012 earthquake – have always been considered one of the most important examples of hermetic knowledge in Italian Renaissance art.
Back at the canvas object of this article, the saint in the picture is unquestionably Santa Lucia. Because she suffered martyrdom in the eyes ( for this reason, she is the Italian patron saint of eye diseases), she was scarcely used by Italian painters of the same age in their altarpieces; as I have already said, renaissance artists followed rules that perhaps could look strange today. That’s to say, they were paid only according to the difficulty of the figures, and generally chose saints and martyrs, which allowed them to “play” with symbolism.
A delicate Y-shaped plant stem seems to hold together the eyes that Saint Lucia has lost. However, even if it alone deserves a whole chapter of hermetic symbolism, the iconography of the letter Y does not seem to be the main musical motif in this case. But the eyes are.
One could also observe that the Greek language, as the Italian, gives the same meaning to the words κόρη, virgin (daughter), and eye pupil. But these are whole eyes, and they are two.
If we look closer at the entire altarpiece – I mean, if we could see it whole as it was at its origins – we can soon observe that it teems with strange and unorthodox details. During the Italian Renaissance, academies, and brotherhoods attempting to reconstruct the ancient wisdom and teachings mushroomed. We know they had to be intended as erudite private coteries in which discussions always took place in symbolic and allegoric ways through metaphors rather than explicit written statements. It was then up to the follower and apprentice to learn through insight. Through intuition. And coincidentally, learning by intuition was called “learning by eyes” and represented by a pair of eyes. New eyes through which to see a new reality. And these flowery eyes seem to be one of the most delicate and elegant ways to represent the necessity of new insight.
But, evidently, that is still not enough. Because the eyes are also a symbol of “twins”. The two-fold nature of the human personality (soul), one part of which is affected by fate, while the other is superior to nature and free from the order of fate and its influence. The neo-Platonist Iamblichus developed this theme above all to reflect his metaphysical view of participation to describe the one-sided relation between inferior and superior.
The Latin translation of geminus as ‘double or dual’ is taken for granted. While for example, Roman historians used this adjective to refer to two-faced Janus. Still, the concept of double inevitably leads to the symbol of the mirror. As we can guess, we are dealing with the same foundations of hermeticism.
The symbol Saint Lucia holds with the other hand may help us narrow our search: the palm branch usually represents a sacrifice, even in Catholic iconography – this is a symbol we often see in the crucifixion – that is, a banquet/convivium with the gods.