Painting and Poetry

The Accademia del Disegno in Florence, the city's academy of artists, ordered this picture for the feast of its patron Saint Luke in 1624. Furini handed it over dated 1626, the year written into his signature along the hem of the yellow drapery.

Painting sits on the left with a palette and brushes in one hand and a mask in the other, the mask standing for the imitation of human action. Poetry is on the right with a stylus, her inkwell weighting a scroll that reads CONCORDI LUMINE MAIOR, greater by a shared light. Furini coined the motto himself. The two arts lean together as though about to kiss.

It was well received. The academy elected him a member on the strength of it, and Galileo Galilei, then in Florence as mathematician to the grand duke and three years past publishing The Assayer, asked him for a second version of the subject.