“Why does she ask forgiveness?/For what and from whom?/Why does she call herself/a mountain tiger?”
Ti chiedo perdono: sono una tigre di montagna
Ginevra de’ Benci, 1457–1521
We know this woman only because
Leonardo painted her portrait
when both of them were young,
her father a Florentine merchant,
her brother da Vinci’s friend.
Herself a beauty, married at sixteen
to a widower twice her age,
she was said to be sickly all her life,
childless, sad, possibly married
to someone she didn’t love.
This last just speculation;
we’ll never know. We do know
she wrote poetry, but only a single line
has come to us down the years.
Why does she ask forgiveness?
For what and from whom?
Why does she call herself
a mountain tiger?.
W. D. Ehrhart has authored or edited a number of collections of poetry and prose, most recently Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems and What We Can and Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life, both from McFarland & Company, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Wales at Swansea and taught at The Haverford School in Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2019.
