Henry Bryan Binns

“ It is among the peculiar qualities of Sandro that he makes one feel, in looking at this picture, that it is one's own hand which grasps those dark curling locks; just as in the "Venus" one is conscious of the light and the wind falling upon one's own body. Behind the Centaur rises a mass of sculptured overhanging rocks, beyond lies a boat in the bay. Almost always there is some note of vista and distance in Botticelli's pictures. The colour of this large canvas is very pleasing. Pallas is clad in a loose green mantle and an under-robe of white adorned with the triple rings of the Medici ”

“ And at the end of those days came Michael Angelo, whose sombre masculine genius stands in such striking contrast to all the subtle grace and wistful gladness of Botticelli.
But Botticelli, who was of the circle of the neo-Platonists, was also among those who loved the friar of Ferrara; if he was the friend of Leonardo da Vinci he was associated also with Michael Angelo. In his life, and in the work which is the expression of that life, we can read plainly the perplexity and the discords, as well as the new and arresting harmonies of that time. His wonder is not all a glad reverence ”

“ Petersburg "Adoration" is broadly conceived, and full of interest, but it suffers from that conscious and obvious emotion which belongs to Sandro's inferior work. In his best, his figures are pure creations, certain of their purpose, confident of conveying a sense of beauty transcending mere subject-interest; they are not "lifelike," they are ideas and symbols of life, and therefore able to convey the spiritual contact of living forms. This is not the case in any of the Adorations I am describing, nor is it in any of the Sixtine frescoes if we except that of "Moses at the Well." ”

“ It is when the spirit in the onlooker responds to the spirit entangled in the magical lines and tones and colours of the painting, that its indefinable beauty dawns upon him. You must love Botticelli's drawing if you are to understand it.
In the same room hangs a smaller picture, very different in style, an "Adoration of the Kings"—a masterpiece too, and worthy of the closest study, but worlds removed from the "Venus." It is very highly and deliberately finished, and unlike its companion, belongs to the years before Sandro worked in Rome. ”

“ Unless Browning has misunderstood the Carmelite brother, the worship of beauty was his real religion; and, mere child of nature as he was, he sought to tell the significance which he found in her face—not indeed by the mere illustration of theological doctrine and pietistic conception, but by the transcription in pure line and perfect colour of a language that had for him no other words.
The friar was living in the neighbouring city of Prato, painting frescoes in the Cathedral, when Sandro joined him and became his favourite pupil. ”

“ But it is in Florence that all but a small minority of Sandro's masterpieces are to be found, and it is in Florence that one first really comes under the spell of the magician. There, in the Uffizi, in the Sala de Lorenzo Monaco, in the holy company of Fra Angelico's saints and angels, is Sandro's masterpiece, "The Birth of Venus." It is a large canvas painted in tempera: [1] but a horizontal join just apparent and running right across the picture, together with the medium used, gives it at first sight the appearance of being executed upon wood. ”

“ In the former, the Holy Family is housed, as in the tondo in the National Gallery, under a wooden shed erected between the ruined pillars of an older order, a temple or perhaps a palace of kings. It contains some forty figures, besides horses, which Sandro loved to introduce, not always very successfully, into his pictures. Too often, like the charger of Holofernes, they are studied not from life, but from some other model: occasionally, as for example in the Medicean "Adoration," one recognises the real creature. ”

“ It was of the little terrier in this picture that Ruskin wrote: "Without any doubt I can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the world—so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's Lord Chancellor Poodle." He is sure that the dog has been barking all the morning at Moses.
I quote this because it is almost the only passage of Ruskin's which is true to Botticelli's work. Sandro's "Venus" is a creative spirit, she is not a mere individual, but a living Platonic Idea ”

“ It is a representation of beauty in a whimsical and even bizarre group of figures gleaming whitely under the dark trees between whose trunks shines the pale serene sky, while the grass through which their delicately modelled feet are moving is rich and full of flowers. ”

“ The "Annunciation" in the Uffizi, is an interesting but doubtful work. The figure of Gabriel is closely related to two others of Sandro's; one the angel supporting the Child in the Ambrosian Madonna, the other the Gabriel in the Predella to the Coronation. But in the larger work the angel is much more fully realised; in face he is nearest in type to the beautiful angel already noted in the tondo of the "Magnificat," but graver. The colour of the picture is hard, crude, and unpleasing. ”

“ After the tragedy of May 23, 1498, his workshop became a rendezvous for the many unemployed artists who had sympathised with the lost cause; and during the long evenings, those men would talk together of the dead days when "Christ was King of Florence." Sandro lived on for more than a decade, through evil days. Ghirlandajo had died in the same year as Pico, when Charles had entered the city: in 1504 his own pupil Filippino preceded him to the grave. The Pollajuoli were dead; Leonardo was but an occasional visitor, while Michael Angelo was dividing his time between Florence and Rome. ”

“ The brothers Piero and Antonio Pollajuolo exercised a profound influence over the young artist. Filippo had taught him to paint emotion—the Pollajuoli were masters in another school, and sought to delineate physical force. There is a little panel by Antonio in the Uffizi, of Hercules and the Hydra, in which every line is almost incredibly tense with the expression of energy—the fierce muscular swing and clutch of struggle. To some extent Sandro was already a man standing upon his own feet ”

“ Instead he returned home and painted a banner of Pallas, for Lorenzo's younger brother Giuliano, the idol of Florence, to carry in the magnificent tournament of January 1475. The banner has been lost, but it marks a point of departure in Sandro's art; as a banner, it recalls the fact that the artist was also a craftsman, and introduced a new method of making such things; the new patron, too, whose life and love were alike destined to so brief a course, whose personality was so vivid and so knightly, exercised no little influence on the painter ”

“ His devotional pictures represent a very young Madonna, with a chubby but thoughtful child, and, where there are other figures, either an aged patriarchal Joseph, or one or more attendant or messenger angels, winged in the later work, and certain saints. His favourite amongst these was Augustine.
But Botticelli is at his best when he escapes from conventionality of subject, and is able to give wing to a lyrical imagination comparable to that of Shelley. He is one of those who feel the wind of the spirit blowing out toward new worlds. ”

“ Another contemporary, very different from Leonardo, with whom Sandro was brought into frequent contact, was Ghirlandajo, the dexterous genre illustrator, decorator, and popular realist. Ghirlandajo's work is, in its essentials, the antithesis of Sandro's, but it is marked by great journalistic talent. Crowded with interest for the Florentines, it brought its author an immense success. In 1480 both he and Botticelli were painting together in the Church of All Saints, and at the close of the year they were both invited to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV. to decorate his new (Sixtine) Chapel. ”

“ As in the case of that picture, its subject has been a matter of much ingenious conjecture. Some commentators see in the two figures portrait studies of Giuliano dei Medici, and of Simonetta Vespucci, and conceive that the sleeping Giuliano is dreaming of his lady, formerly clad in all the panoply of Pallas, but now disarmed by laughing loves. It is obvious, however, that the armour belongs to the man who lies asleep leaning upon some of it. ”

“ Barnabas in the Florentine Academy. Here, too, angels are holding back the curtains, while others display the crown of thorns and the nails. Mary sits on a raised throne worked with elaborate bas-reliefs. Before her, with their backs to her and the Child, are six saints, among them, with beautiful face, but rather bunchy figure, St. Catherine. Similarly elaborate and enthroned, though this time under a canopy of palm, is the Bardi "Madonna with the two Saints John" at Berlin. This, perhaps the most elaborately detailed of all Sandro's pictures, measures 6 feet by 6. ”

“ The most celebrated of these are the two tondos, or round panels, of Mary with the Child and several young angels, hanging opposite to one another in the Uffizi. Somewhat similar in design, they are yet essentially different. From its style, the first was probably painted about 1479, and the second in the same period as the "Venus," and the "Bardi Madonna" (1484-1485) ; the two pictures being thus separated by Sandro's sojourn in Rome. The earlier, that of the "Magnificat," is more brilliant and varied in colour, and of consummate finish: Mary's face is related to that of the "Pallas " ”