Botticelli

“ The curves of the mantle, which she holds out against the boisterous wind, make a delicious line that balances that of the "Venus." After the figure of the goddess, however, who really is no Venus, but rather the Muse of Sandro's art, the ideal of his aspirations—after her figure, the interest of the picture lies in the intricate whirl of living lines, of dark wings, pale limbs, and delicately coloured scarfs, with which Botticelli has symbolised the winds of Spring, stirring up the water with their feet and blowing the voyager on her way. ”

“ Indeed, in certain little-known studies for Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Calumny of Apelles one may discover, in the strong sweep of the outline, in the solid fashion in which the figures are planted on their feet—all peculiarities which disappear in the painted pictures, where grace of motion and exquisitive research take the place of solid draughtsman-ship—the hand of the artist whom the restless desire to confront ever new problems alone prevented from attaining a place among the great men of his time. ”

“ BOTTICELLI Never pretty, scarcely ever charming or even attractive; rarely correct in drawing, and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling acutely intense and even dolorous—what is it then that makes Sandro Botticelli so irresistible that nowadays we may 70 have no alternative but to worship or abhor him? The secret is this, that in European painting there has never again been an artist so indifferent to representation and so intent upon presentation. ”

“ Of all the arts architecture is least apt for this sort of evocation. Even Pater hardly knows that song to which the memory of Chartres would, like a mist, rise into towers, though he could reweave by his magic the very spell of Botticelli, and recall with his subtle harmonies the very presence that rose so strangely by the waters of Leonardo. ”

“ To me Botticelli is the nearest return to the Greek spirit of beauty, grace and lightness of soul, combined with later delicacy and romance that the modern world has known. It is so beautiful that for me it is sad—full of the sadness that only perfect beauty can inspire.
I sated myself on the house fronts or backs below the Ponte Vecchio
I think now, of all the places I saw in Italy, perhaps Florence really preserves in spite of its changes most of the atmosphere of the past, but that is surely not for long, either; for it is growing and the Germans are arriving. ”

“ Yes, Botticelli had become his master—Botticelli, whom at first sight in the National Gallery he had rejected for insufficient draughtsmanship, but all of whose naïve exaggerations, of hands or feet or necks, he now credited to artistic intention, prepared to maintain from loving study of his delicately luminous canvases and his blond ethereal frescos that the Master’s drawing had only repudiated the bonds of the Real in quest of a higher beauty, a more gracious harmony of curves, even as his coloring had refined away that oleaginous quality which a Rubens found in human flesh. ”

“ Don't strive to be original; no one ever got Heaven's gift of invention by saying, "I must have it, and since I don't feel it I must assume it and pretend it;" follow rather your master patiently and lovingly for a long time; give and take, echo his habits as Botticelli echoed Filippo Lippi's, but improve upon them; add something to them if you can, as he also did, and pass then on, as he also did, to the little Filippo—Filippino—making him a truer and sweeter heart than his father, out of the well of truth and sweetness with which Botticelli's own heart was brimming. ”

“ And what an eternal symbol of the world's wretchedness was that woman, whose face one could not see, and who sobbed so distractedly without it being possible for one to wipe away her tears. Yes, a Botticelli, unknown, uncatalogued, what a discovery! Then he paused to inquire of Pierre: "Did you know it was a Botticelli?"
"Oh no! I spoke to Don Vigilio about it one day, but he seemed to think it of no account. And Victorine, when I spoke to her, replied that all those old things only served to harbour dust." ”

“ There was a gathering of painters in Perugino's studio that day. Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo were there, and in the background the pupil Raphael was listening to the talk.
'What dost thou think of this new style of painting?' asked Botticelli. 'To me it seems but strange and unpleasing. Music and motion are delightful, but this violent twisting of limbs to show the muscles offends my taste.'
'Yet it is most marvellously skilful,' said the young Leonardo thoughtfully. ”

“ The ingenious grace of Botticelli passes sometimes from the realm of art to that of poetry, as in the case of those flowers, with stiff, tall stems, which he places by the uplifted foot of the middle Grace, thus showing that she has trodden over it, like Virgil's Camilla, without crushing it. But the element of sentiment and poetry depends in reality upon the fascination of movement and arrangement; fascination seemingly from within, a result of exquisite breeding in those imperfectly made creatures. It is the grace of a woman not beautiful, but well dressed and moving well ”

“ Do you know the face of Oliver Goldsmith, the droop of the head, the receding chin and the bulging forehead? Well, Botticelli's face was the antithesis of this.
Most of the truly great artists have been men of this Stone Age— quality men who dared. Michelangelo was the pure type: Titian who lived a century (lacking one year) was another. Leonardo was the same fine savage (who in some miraculous way also possessed the grace of a courtier) . Franz Hals, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Botticelli were all men of fierce appetites and heroic physiques. ”

“ Such a melancholy mother as this of Botticelli would have strangled her baby in its cradle to rescue it from the future. But of Botticelli there is much to say. One of the Filippo Lippis is perhaps his masterpiece—a Madonna in a small rose-garden (such a “flowery close” as Mr. William Morris loves to haunt) , leaning over an Infant who kicks his little human heels on the grass while half-a-dozen curly-pated angels gather about him, looking back over their shoulders with the candour of children in tableaux vivants, and one of them drops an armful of gathered roses one by one upon the baby. ”

“ Fortunately for him and us, Botticelli, the smith, was a man of some wisdom and when he saw that the lad originated beautiful designs and had creative genius he did not treat the matter with scorn, as the master of Andrea del Sarto had done, but sent him instead to Fra Filippo (Lippo Lippi) to be taught the art of painting. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ These delicate little masterpieces are, turn by turn, a picture of Botticelli, a fresco by Giulio Romano, an engraving of Mantegna, a bass-relief of young Buonarroti, or a-408- garden-scene of Gozzoli, expressed in the purest diction of all literatures by a poet who, while imitating, never ceased to be original. [496] Nothing more was needed by a nation of idyllic dreamers, artists and scholars. ”

“ It will help us to perceive how great Botticelli is in his solitary poetry, to consider two younger contemporaries, Filippino Lippi, his pupil, and Piero di Cosimo, an intelligent imitator of Leonardo, both of whom, sharing Botticelli’s discontent, also sought escape in self-assertiveness of an eccentric sort. As the modern age begins to dawn, the modern temperamental artist appears. The bottega begins to be a studio. ”

“ In my opinion, it is that principal figure that is the key to the picture; it is for this figure that everything has been done, and this it is, above all, that we must interrogate if we wish to know Botticelli's meaning. Evidently it is neither Venus, nor Spring; and the precision of the features, and the fidelity of the smallest details of the costume make us believe that we are in the presence of a veritable portrait.... Around her, Nature adorns herself with flowers; Spring and the Graces surround her like a train of Fays. ”

“ Watteau concealed a cankering secret; so Botticelli. Melancholy is the base of the Florentine’s work. As a young man he created in joy and freedom; but the wings of Dürer’s Bat were outstretched over his brooding head. Melencolia! He could ask if there is anything sadder under the sun than a soul incapable of sadness. There is more poignant music in his Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, neuropathic Madonnas—Pater calls them “peevish”—in his Venus at the Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. ”

“ It is our appreciation of the artist's desire for beauty and refinement, of his search for the exquisite. Herein, to my mind, lies some of the secret of Botticelli's fantastic grace; the explanation of that alternate or rather interdependent ugliness and beauty. Botticelli, as I have said elsewhere, must have been an admirer of the grace and sentiment of Perugino, of the delicacy of form of certain Florentine sculptors—Ghiberti, and those who proceed from him, Desiderio, Mino, and particularly the mysterious Florentine sculptor of Rimini ”

“ Why? The first reason should be sought in that reaction against the pseudo-classic style of the Renaissance which has seemed to be the dominant tendency of art in the Nineteenth Century. But this explanation does not suffice to tell us for what reasons the favour of the public has specially fallen upon Botticelli. Why select Botticelli rather than any other artist of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century? Why Botticelli and not Giotto, or Fra Angelico, or, to cite none but his contemporaries, why not Signorelli, or Ghirlandajo? ”

“ After a design by a close follower of Botticelli, possibly by Bartolommeo di Giovanni
“But whether immediately after Botticelli or after some minor artist of the school, there is the same delightful flow and rhythmic motion in the design that one thinks of in relation to Botticelli’s Spring.... We could ill afford to lose the charm of the early Florentine Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne for all the finished beauty of Marcantonio’s Lucretia, and it is still the youth of artistic development, with its naïve joy and freshness of outlook, which holds us with the stronger spell.” ”

“ In those two great pictures of martyrdom and miracle there are faces suggestive of overmuch leather and bony outline, such as Botticelli, in the violent pursuit of realism, too often allowed himself to design for the sake of genuine expression and physical fidelity. ”

“ What offers for the Botticelli? Any Fresher who wishes to prove herself endowed with refined and artistic—One shilling? Thank you, madam. And sixpence! One and nine. One and nine for this genuine Botticelli. Ladies, ladies, this is a sad day for Newnham. And nine—and nine. Going. Going—gone!”
It was Hannah who had testified to her own artistic qualities by purchasing this photograph. She tucked it proudly under her arm, and turned an envious eye on a brass flower-pot which was now engaging the auctioneer’s attention. ”

“ Of Sandro Botticelli the samples are more frequent; and in these simple designs the painter is seen at no disadvantage. The dull and dry quality of this thin pallid colouring can here no longer impair the charm of his natural grace, the merit of his strenuous labour. Many of his single figures are worthy of praise and study: the head of a girl with gathered hair; the figure of a youth raised from the dead; that of an old man with a head like a satyr's. Two groups not far apart may be used as studies of his various power and fancy. ”

“ Their sculpture shares with the paintings of Botticelli and the churches of Brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the art of Italy in that century. Their works have been much neglected, and often almost hidden away amid the frippery of modern decoration, and we come with some surprise on the places where their fire still smoulders. One longs to penetrate into the lives of the men who have given expression to so much power and sweetness ”

“ This is a copy of a picture by Botticelli in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. In the background is a hedge of roses, Botticelli's favourite flower. "No man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them" (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xii. 2) . And he painted them, just as he painted his Madonnas, from life, and from everyday life—for even as late as forty years ago, Florence was "yet encircled by a wilderness of wild rose." ”