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WIKIMAG n. 5 - Aprile 2013
Sandro Botticelli
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Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as
Sandro Botticelli (Italian: [ˈsandro
bottiˈtʃɛlli]; c. 1445[1]
– May 17, 1510), was an Italian painter of the Early
Renaissance. He belonged to the
Florentine school under the patronage of
Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that
Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later as
a "golden
age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his
Vita of Botticelli. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered
until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to
represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best
known works are
The Birth of Venus and
Primavera.
Biography
Early life
He was born in the city of
Florence in a house in the Via Nuova, Borg'Ognissanti. Vasari
reported that he was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother
Antonio.[2]
There are very few details of Botticelli's life, but it is known that he
became an apprentice when he was about fourteen years old, which would
indicate that he received a fuller education than other Renaissance
artists. Probably by 1462 he was apprenticed to
Fra Filippo Lippi;[3]
many of his early works have been attributed to the elder master, and
attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced also by the
monumentality of
Masaccio's painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a
more intimate and detailed manner. As recently discovered, during this
time, Botticelli could have traveled to
Hungary,
participating in the creation of a fresco in
Esztergom, ordered in the workshop of Filippo Lippi by
János Vitéz, then
archbishop of Hungary.[citation
needed]
By 1470, Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this early date,
his work was characterized by a conception of the figure as if seen in
low relief, drawn with clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts
of light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled forms.
Maturity
The
Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475–1476, now
at the
Uffizi), contains the portraits of
Cosimo de Medici, his sons
Piero and
Giovanni, and his grandsons
Lorenzo and
Giuliano. The quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of
Botticelli's pinnacles.
"Like much of Florence, Botticelli had come under the sway
of Savonarola and his art had transformed from the
decorative to the deeply devout -
The Mystical Nativity (c. 1500-1501) [for example]
bears all the signs of this change" [4]
In 1481,
Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine
and Umbrian artists to fresco the walls of the
Sistine Chapel. The iconological program was the supremacy of the
Papacy. Sandro's contribution included the
Temptations of Christ, the
Punishment of the Rebels and
Trial of Moses. He returned to Florence, and "being of a
sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of
Dante and illustrated the
Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this
abstention from work led to serious disorders in his living." Thus
Vasari characterized the first printed
Dante (1481) with Botticelli's decorations; he could not imagine
that the new art of
printing might occupy an artist.
The masterpieces
Primavera (c. 1482) and
The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) were both seen by Vasari at the
villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello in the mid-16th
century, and until recently, it was assumed that both works were painted
specifically for the villa. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise: the
Primavera was painted for Lorenzo's townhouse in Florence, and
The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different
site. By 1499, both had been installed at Castello.[5]
In these works, the influence of
Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli's study of the antique. But
if the painterly means may be understood, the subjects themselves remain
fascinating for their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these paintings
continue to receive widespread scholarly attention, mainly focusing on
the poetry and philosophy of humanists who were the artist's
contemporaries. The works do not illustrate particular texts; rather,
each relies upon several texts for its significance. Of their beauty,
characterized by Vasari as exemplifying "grace" and by
John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt.
In the mid-1480s, Botticelli worked on a major fresco cycle with
Perugino,
Domenico Ghirlandaio and
Filippino Lippi, for
Lorenzo the Magnificent's villa near
Volterra; in addition he painted many frescoes in Florentine
churches. In 1491 he served on a committee to decide upon a façade for
the
Cathedral of Florence.
Savonarola monument, Ferrara
Influence of
Savonarola
In later life, Botticelli was one of the followers of the deeply
moralistic friar
Savonarola who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in
1498, though the full extent of Savonarola's influence remains
uncertain.[6]
"The story that he burnt his own paintings on pagan themes in the
notorious "Bonfire
of the Vanities" is not told by Vasari, who nevertheless asserts
that of the sect of Savonarola "he was so ardent a partisan that he was
thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to live
on, fell into very great distress. For this reason, persisting in his
attachment to that party, and becoming a Piagnone[7]
he abandoned his work." Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinmann searched
for the artist's psychological development through his Madonnas. In the
"deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Mary's
physiognomy", Steinmann discerned proof of Savonarola's influence over
Botticelli. (In Steinmann's work the dates of a number of Madonnas were
placed at a later point in the artist's life). Steinmann disagreed with
Vasari's assertion that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under
the influence of Savonarola, believing rather that the spiritual and
emotional Virgins painted by Sandro followed directly from the teachings
of the Dominican monk.
Death
and posthumous eclipse
Botticelli was already little employed in 1502. In 1504 he was a
member of the committee appointed to decide where
Michelangelo's
David would be placed. His later work, especially as seen in a
series on the life of
St. Zenobius, witnessed a diminution of scale, expressively
distorted figures, and a non-naturalistic use of colour reminiscent of
the work of
Fra Angelico nearly a century earlier. After his death, his
reputation was eclipsed longer and more thoroughly than that of any
other major European artist. His paintings remained in the churches and
villas[8]
for which they had been created, his frescoes in the
Sistine Chapel upstaged by Michelangelo's. British collector
William Young Ottley had however brought Botticelli's
The Mystical Nativity to London with him in 1799 after buying
it in Italy. After Ottley's death, its next purchaser, William
Fuller-Maitland of Stansted, allowed it to be exhibited in a major art
exhibition held in
Manchester in 1857, The
Art Treasures Exhibition,[9]
where among many other art works it was viewed by more than a million
people. The first nineteenth-century art historian to have looked with
satisfaction at Botticelli's Sistine frescoes was
Alexis-François Rio;
Anna Brownell Jameson and
Charles Eastlake were alerted to Botticelli, works by his hand began
to appear in German collections, and the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into
their own.[10]
Walter Pater created a literary picture of Botticelli, who was then
taken up by the Aesthetic movement. The first monograph on the artist
was published in 1893; then, between 1900 and 1920 more books were
written on Botticelli than on any other painter.[11]
Private life
Botticelli never wed, and expressed a strong aversion to the idea of
marriage, a prospect he claimed gave him nightmares.[12]
The popular view is that he suffered from an unrequited love for
Simonetta Vespucci, a married noblewoman. According to popular
belief, she had served as the model for
The Birth of Venus and recurs throughout his paintings, despite the
fact that she had died years earlier, in 1476. Botticelli asked that
when he died, he be buried at her feet in the
Church of Ognissanti in Florence. His wish was carried out when he
died some 34 years later, in 1510.
Some modern historians have also examined other aspects of his
sexuality. In 1938,
Jacques Mesnil discovered a summary of a charge in the Florentine
Archives for November 16, 1502, which read simply "Botticelli keeps a
boy", under an accusation of
sodomy.
The painter would then have been fifty-eight; the charges were
eventually dropped. Mesnil dismissed it as a customary slander by which
partisans and adversaries of
Savonarola abused each other. Opinion remains divided on whether
this is evidence of
homosexuality.[13]
Many have firmly backed Mesnil,[14]
but others have cautioned against hasty dismissal of the charge.[15]
Yet while speculating on the subject of his paintings, Mesnil
nevertheless concluded "woman was not the only object of his love".[16]
Works
See also
References
- ^
a
b
Patrick,
Renaissance and Reformation vol 1, 2007. Other sources
give 1446, 1447 or 1444–45.
-
^
According to Vasari, he was still
in school in February 1458; an able pupil, he easily grew
restless, and was initially apprenticed as a goldsmith.
Lightbown, p. 19.
-
^
Lightbown, p. 20.
-
^
The Private Life of a Christmas
Masterpiece
The Mystic Nativity BBC TV 2009
-
^
Smith, Webster: On the Original
Location of the Primavera.
-
^
Murphy,
Mimi (March 21, 2004).
"Return of a forgotten master". time.com.
-
^
A "Weeper" or "Mourner", as the
repentant followers of Savonarola were called. (Vasari
text on-line).
-
^
Primavera and The Birth
of Venus remained in the Grand Ducal Medici villa of
Castello until 1815. (Levey 1960:292
-
^
bulletin.us
-
^
Pre-Raphaelite Art in the
Victoria & Albert Museum, Suzanne Fagence Cooper, p.95-96
ISBN 1-85177-394-0
-
^
This section is based on Michael
Levey, "Botticelli and Nineteenth-Century England" Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23.3/4 (July
1960:291-306).
-
^
Ronald Lightbown, Sandro
Botticelli: Life and Work, New York, 1989
-
^
Louis Crompton, Homosexuality
and Civilization, Harvard University, 2003
-
^
Michael Rocke, Forbidden
Friendships: Homosexuality and Male culture in Renaissance
Florence, Oxford University Press, 1996
-
^
Andre Chastel, Art et humanisme
a Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique, Presses
Universitaires de France, 1959
-
^
Jacques Mesnil, Botticelli,
Paris, 1938
Sources
- Knackfuss H., Monographs On Artists, VI. Botticelli
by Ernst Steinman, Translated by Campbell Dodgson, New York, Lemcke
& Huachner, 1901, Pg. 112.
-
New York Times, Life of Botticelli, November 19, 1904,
Page BR783.
- Da Vinci Declassified, 2006
TLC documentary
- Ullman, H., Sandro Botticelli, 1893
- Yashiro, Y., Sandro Botticelli and the Florentine Renaissance,
1929
- Lightbown, R., Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, 1989
- The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Macropaedia, Volume 2,
1991, Page 413-14.
Further reading
In his book Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, Ronald Lightbown
claims "There are only two books to attempt a catalogue raisonné of the
works of Botticelli and his school" (source: page 328 of the 1989
edition). These are the two books:
- Salvini R., Tutti la pittura del Botticelli, Milan,
Rizzoli Editore, 1958 (in Italian)
- Mandel G., Botticelli, 1969 (in English; earlier Italian
[1967] and French [1968] versions exist)
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