Looking at Katharine Augusta Carl’s 1903 portrait of Cixi, Dowager Empress of China in the DailyArt online magazine today, I was struck by the parallels with a picture of another woman, made three-and-a-half centuries earlier and half a world away: Eleonora of Toledo, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Here she is, with her son Giovanni, in Bronzino’s famous portrait of 1544/5.
Cixi was not only Empress Dowager but also the longest-reigning Regent of China and, as Iolanda Munck says in her DailyArt article[1]: “Her reign overlapped with some of the most turbulent times in Chinese history. She witnessed the First and Second Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, followed by the First Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russian Invasion of parts of China, and the Russo-Japanese War, which likewise took place in parts of China. Tragedy also brimmed her personal life. She lost her husband, the Xianfeng emperor, in 1861. Then, in 1875, illness took away both her only son, the Tongzhi emperor, and his wife, Empress Xiaozheyi. The young emperor and empress consort died young. They were respectively 18 and 20.”
Cixi determined to save China from being overwhelmed. As well as consolidating her personal power, “her strategy was to devise an imperial image of herself and use it to display the strength of the nation she ruled.” Hence the commissioning of portraits by the American artist Katharine Augusta Carl. As well as imperial symbols like the phoenix and the peacock, she also told the artist to include the fantastic necklace/shawl of pearls, the bright yellow silks and those extraordinary nail protectors made of jade. “She declared her royal lineage through opulence,” says Iolanda.
And that is exactly what Eleonora of Toledo does in the Bronzino portrait. Her husband Cosimo de’ Medici, the first Duke of Florence (and later Grand Duke of Tuscany), also needed to consolidate and publicise his family’s power. And what better way than in the opulent symbolism of this portrait of his wife Eleonora? Here’s a closer view:
This painting is not about Eleanora and her son Giovanni as people. it is really all about the dress, and telling the world who’s boss. The dress, in heavily brocaded silk velvet with black arabesques intertwined with gold looped strands, is an in-your-face symbol of power, like the gold belt adorned with jewels, attributed to Benvenuto Cellini.
As with Cixi’s picture, this portrait is full of symbols: the pomegranate motif on the dress, for example, alludes to fertility, while Eleanora’s arm on her son’s shoulder stresses the continuity of the Medici line.
Eleonora and Cixi’s portraits, painted more than 350 years and 5000 miles apart, demonstrate the enduring and universal power of art. They also delight the eye and stimulate the intellect. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s artistic story.
[1] The Portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi by Katharine Augusta Carl | DailyArt Magazine