“The drawing illustrates the event which led to the out- break of the Guelph and Ghibelline quarrel in Florence in 1215. Buondelmonte de'Buondelmonti, a young nobleman of Guelph affiliations, was betrothed to a lady of a Ghibelline house, the Amidei; but Gualdrada Donati, an ambitious widow belonging to another Guelph family, determined he should marry her daughter instead. The girl was of great beauty, and by suddenly presenting her to him as he rode in the streets of Florence, and arguing that in any case it behoved him to marry a Guelph, the widow succeeded in making him break his exist- ing engagement. The Amidei and their supporters thereupon killed him in revenge, thus starting a chain of recriminatory murders and battles. In the drawing, the spectator stands with his back to the river Arno, at the northern end of the Ponte Vecchio. On the left the widow Donati is seen presenting her daughter to Buondelmonte, while on the right his betrothed bride of the Amidei arrives for the wedding by barge, guided by a blindfold figure of Cupid. In the centre is the statue of Mars which stood on the old bridge, and at the foot of which, on Easter Sunday, Buondelmonte's death took place. The middle-dis- tance is crowded with scenes of preparation for the marriage." 1 This is the most elaborate of seven designs connected with Burne-Jones's intention, expressed in his retrospective list of works, to paint "a large oil picture of the Wedding of Buondelmonte," which is not known ever to have been begun. The others are sketches, in pencil and ink, that concentrate on Buondelmonte's fatal meeting with the widow Donati's daughter. 2 The story is twice referred to in Dante's Divine Comedy, and was given in detail in Machiavelli's History of Florence. It is probable that Burne-Jones saw the painting by G. F. Watts, Guelphs and Ghibelltnes^ when he was staying at Little Holland House during the summer of 1858. According to G. P. Boyce, Burne-Jones started work on the design in January 1859, though it was not completed until Christmas. 3 In the autumn the artist had visited Italy for the first time, and the incorporation of an Italianate landscape background and larger foreground scenes, with figures of a dis- tinctly Venetian character, seems to reflect Burne-Jones s first- hand study of early Renaissance painting. The decorative devices on the frame include the fleur-de-lis of Florence and eagles, probably alluding to the rival claims to the Holy Roman Empire of Otto IV and Frederick II, who were supported respectively by the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Florence. 4 Buondelmonte's Wedding was owned successively by some of the most distinguished patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the Leeds collector Thomas Plint. 1. Arts Council 1975-76, p. 23. 2. Christian 1973a, pis. 31—36. 3. "Jones showed me the commencement of a pen and ink drawing for Ruskin - subject from Florentine history" (Surtees 1980, p. 26, entry for January 17, 1859). There is no further indication that the drawing was ever offered to Ruskin or that it belonged to him. 4. Arts Council 1975-76, p. 22.
The hidden autobiographical content of later works would suggest that the choice of subject had some special significance for the affianced artist and that the subject of a man questioning his choice of bride, may be expressing some doubts on the part of the artist, who was attracted to all three of the MacDonald sisters. Alternatively the subject may reflect Burne Jones observations on Rossetti's relationships.
