The complete paintings of Botticelli

128 Pages·1968·22.19 MB·English

by  Gabriele Mandel

CLASSICS OF THE WORLD'S GREAT ART
The Complete Paintings of
Botticelli
Introduction by Notes and Catalogue by
Michael Levey Gabriele Mandel
ABRAMS

The complete paintings of
Botticelli
ntroduction by Michael Levey
Notes and catalogue by Gabriele Mandel
New
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers York
BRIGHTON
F
Classics of the World's
Great Art
Editor
Paolo Lecaldano
International
Advisory Board
Gian Alberto dell'Acqua
Andre Chastel
Douglas Cooper
Lorenz Eitner
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari
Bruno Molajoli
Carlo L. Ragghianti
Xavier de Salas
David Talbot Rice
Jacques Thuillier
Rudolf Wittkower
This series of books is
published in Italy by Rizzoli
Editore. in France by
Flammarion, in the United
Kingdom by Weidenfe/d and
Nicolson, in the United States
by Harry N.Abrams, Inc.,
in Spain by Editorial
Noguer and in Switzerland by
Kunstkreis
Standard Book Number
8109-5501-6
Library of Congress Catalogue
Card Number 75-85175
©
Copyright in Italy by
Rizzoli Editore, 1967
Printed and bound in Italy
Table of contents
Michael Levey Introduction 5
Gabriele Mandel An outline of the artist's critical history 10
The paintings in color 15
List of plates 16
The works 81
Bibliography 82
Outline biography 83
Catalogue of works 85
Appendix Botticelli's other artistic activities 113
Indexes Subjects 118
Titles 118
Topographical 119

Introduction
We must always be grateful to the nineteenth century His paintings - all of them illustrated in one form
for rediscovering Botticelli; yet to some extent he is or another in this book - are distinguished by a revo-
in need of being discovered again. lutionary, innovatory refinement, using the word in
The sudden rush of fame after three centuries of its original technical sense ofpurifying and separating
real neglect propelled an image now seen to be only a substance from extraneous matter. Any idea of
too patently ofnineteenth-century devising. Although Botticelli as decorating or ornamenting surfaces,
it has long been clear that Botticelli was not a willful adding to things, is quite wrong. It is the first way in
creator ofsicklyJin de Steele Virgins, it has by no means which he differs from his master, Fra Filippo Lippi,
been established what sort of artist he was. And then whose work was aptly described by a fifteenth-century
the sheer familiarity ofpictures like the Primavera and Florentine as "gratioso et ornato et artificioso sopra
the Birth of Venus has induced a sort of weariness of modo". It is incidentally worth noting that what
theeye, onlyenhanced by ageneral, welcome tendency another percipient contemporary thought remarkable
to place the Florentine early Renaissance in proper about Botticelli's pictures was their "aria virile" - a
perspective, no longer the awesome isolated peak of sharp contradiction to any lingering associations of
Western art which it once was. Nor would it be languor.
surprising if at least English writers hesitated to add Botticelli's refinement is a stripping away of in-
more words to the often beautiful if perverse appreci- essentials and ofmerely distracting surface naturalism,
ations of Botticelli evoked in nineteenth-century but it is not a rejection of nature. In this process he
England. can reasonably be paralleled with Klee. Perhaps it is
It may even be asked if Botticelli is a Renaissance no more than chance that both are masters of mar-
figure at all, but it is as well not to formulate a con- velous line; what is less uncertain is that both painters
cept of "the Renaissance" as though it had been an had studied nature intensely, and what they produce
art movement comparable to Impressionism or Die are concentrated, economical images more vital and
Br'ucke. Botticelli is not known to have executed essential than any transcript of ordinary nature as
sculpture, designed buildings, written poems or we see it. As rigorously as Leonardo must Botticelli
theoretical treatises. He quite fails to be the uomo have observed the natural form of a shell - itself in
universale of popular Renaissance myth, yet it would hard thinness, fluted curves and faintest translucence,
be rash to disqualify him from being of the Renais- a perfect symbol ofhis style. Botticelli studied it, how-
sance for defects which happen also to be Titian's. As ever, only to transform it into magically giant form
long as any viable concept exists of "Renaissance", it and make it the floating vehicle supporting Venus
is likely that Titian will be admitted within it. Like across the waves to the seashore of Cythera (Pis.
him, Botticelli was primarily a painter. Apart from XLIV-V). That island is shown with ajagged coast-
the special case ofhis Dante illustrations, drawings by line extending from foreground to horizon, without
him are remarkably few. As a painter - as a highly aerial perspective and with scarcely any three-
intelligent if not intellectual artist who created a dimensional modelling. One long memorable line
highly personal and sophisticated style ofexpression indents the pale promontories, so many green spear-
Botticelli should be recognized as indeed part of the points fronting a liquid element that does not resemble
Renaissance. So far from being, as is sometimes sup- the sea but in which one perceives what Klee called
posed, retardataire, he was if anything in advance of "the process of flowing". The shore with its few trees
his period - having more in common with Pontormo is the barest scaffolding of nature: three gilt-flecked
than with his contemporary Ghirlandaio. poles are stuck in velvet-soft green mould and become
5
INTRODUCTION
a myrtle grove. It led him to the very opposite of sculptural effects
Yet we "read" this picture with no more difficulty in painting, though that does not mean he had not
than we do the much more naturalistically imitative looked at, particularly, Donatello's sculpture. The
Baptism of Christ (in the Uffizi) by Verrocchio and anatomical emphasis of Castagno and Antonio
Leonardo, a famous picture which makes a fascinating Pollaiuolo - both men older than he - also affected
comparison - in subject and composition as well as him, but he rapidly recognized that in art states of
style - and which almost certainly precedes Botticelli's emotion must dictate beyond muscular behavior in
BirthofVenus. 11istheVerrocchio-Leonardonaturalism ordinary life. His figures mime their states ofmind. In
which seems doomed, timid and even inartistic, in extremes of grief and joy, they are like reeds shaken
pursuit ofsomething that would ultimately be satisfied in the wind. Bending without breaking, the troubled
by photography. Anyway, it is a confusion of thought Virgin receives the angel's salutation (PI. L). Around
to believe that Christ's baptism will necessarily take the Virgin and Child in the Madonna ofthe Pomegranate
on greater reality if it is depicted in what seems (PI. XXXVIII) six angel heads express adoration in
illusionistically like a real river in a real, modeled a tour-de-force ofvaried poses and significance, none
landscape. The way is opened toward Holman Hunt's of them repeating the other. In the tall Pieta (PI.
Light ofthe World. LVIII), the very shape of which helps to tauten
Behind Botticelli's picture is intense conviction and emotion, grief grows so intense that one Mary has
intense confidence about the power ofart. Not merely become a faceless bundle of draperies, held together
is there pleasure for us in enjoying the world he has by two quivering hands. And, most marvelously ofall,
built up - not copied - out of nature, but the con- in the Mystic Nativity (PI. LXII) heaven's joy at the
viction and confidence give significant reality to what event is expressed by that dance ofinterlinked angels
is depicted. There is therefore, paradoxically or not, a in a sky of gold and luminous blue: twelve figures
religious credibility about his pagan goddess which borne up less by their wings than by utter ecstasy, an
marks a new attitude to mythological subject-matter. ecstasy communicated to the curling folds of their
Artistically, she certainly challenges the Christian god. dresses and even to their scrolls uncoiling like sud-
It would be absurd to deduce from that anything denly released springs.
about Botticelli's own personal religious belief; and What is conveyed is not always a violent extreme of
the nineteenth century notoriously detected in him emotion. In the Mystic Nativity the foreground pairs
ambiguities that really layin itsown perplexed attitude of angels embracing mortals are wonderful certainly,
to Christianity. Yet, theartisticconvictionofBotticelli's but well known; less familiar is the detail (PI. LXIII)
picture is reinforced by the likelihood that it has where an angel bends over a still bewildered shepherd,
ethical and moral significance ; itwas probably painted one hand tenderly reassuring at his shoulder, the other
not just as a large-scale decorative canvas but as a stretched out indicating the newly born Child with
didactic one. A beautiful ruling deity remains its theme such urgency that the arm seems almost detached, so
and the centre of its composition. That too could be unrealistically long and thin has it become. Yet, within
sensed, long before modern scholarship indicated neo- the arrow-like wedge formed between the angel's two
Platonic philosophy behind the picture and we should arms, Botticelli finds space for the shepherd slowly to
;
honor Pater for treating it so seriously and recog- push back his hood^paying homage as the significance
nizing in its Venus "the depository of a great power ofthe scene gradually becomes apparent to him. These
over men". poignantly vivid images compress all - and indeed
The process of stripping away appearances which more than - words can say about heaven and earth,
is an actual physical result - accounting for the dis- about inspiration and mere human understanding,
concerting effect of Botticelli's work and its neglect and they also crystallize that faith in divinely peaceful
during periods of robust naturalism - is something order coming to the world which Botticelli records
pursued not merely then to give clean-cut, artistically more cryptically in the Greek inscription at the top
beautiful images in themselves, but to affect the ofthe picture.
spectator emotionally. To Botticelli's keenness of line The Mystic Nativity may well be one of the last of
must be added his psychological keenness. He had Botticelli's surviving paintings, but it should not be
studied the nature of leaves and shells (a fine conch treated as some abrupt palinode, either artistically or
appearing in Mars and Venus, Pis. XXXVI-VII), personally. Far from representing any break with his
but penetration ofhuman nature is the most remark- early style, it is a culmination of many tendencies.
able of his studies. Along with formal motifs, touches ofnature observed
6