Italian painter, originally Francesco Morandini da Poppi. He went to Florence at an early age and became a protégé of Vincenzo Borghini. He was trained by Giorgio Vasari, whose team of artists he joined in the work of remodelling the Palazzo Vecchio for Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, later Grand Duke of Tuscany.
This painting is a modello (a study) for Poppi’s signed altarpiece for the Grifoni chapel in the church of SS. Jacopo e Lucia (called church of San Domenico) in San Miniato al Tedesco, near Pisa.
The three young girls, the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, are the personification of female beauty and grace. The Greek poet Hesiod, in his poem Theogony, recalls their names: Euphrosyne (Joy), Aglaea (Radiance), and Thalia (Prosperity).
In line with the traditional iconography of Greek-Roman origin, Poppi depicts them nude, according to the classical custom that saw the female nude as the representation of ideal beauty which has no need for ornaments. The three women are standing in a circle. The central figure has her back turned and the other two are facing the spectator. They are clasping hands with one another in a sort of dance that symbolises the circular harmony of friendship.
Francesco Morandini, known as Poppi, a student of Vasari’s, belonged to the circle of artists active at the Medici court in the sophisticated intellectual circle that had formed around Francesco I de’ Medici and scholar Don Vincenzo Borghini in the early 1570s.
