Botticelli Part 2

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. Like Augustine in the St. Barnabas picture, the Evangelist is occupied with his book and pen, while an eagle stands behind him; the Baptist, carrying his tall staff and banderole, "Behold the Lamb of G.o.d," is very n.o.bly drawn, recalling in handling the figure of the "Centaur." But the picture is not a happy one; it is set and conventional, the result of great skill and labour, but little love.

PLATE VIII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY AN OPEN WINDOW. (From the panel in the National Gallery)

An interesting school-work, in which the different parts of the picture are all taken from some design or painting of the master. The colour and line are, however, lacking in the distinction belonging to his own work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VIII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY AN OPEN WINDOW.]

The same must be said of the "Coronation of the Virgin" in the Florence Academy, one of Sandro's largest tempera works, an upright altar-piece measuring 12 feet by 8, commissioned by the guild of gold-workers for Savonarola's Church of San Marco. It is painted in two sections--like t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption"--the lower, containing four too carefully posing saints; the upper, a sort of tondo, with a golden ground, in which the figures of the Virgin and the Father are both obviously incommoded by the shape of the frame. But the picture is notable for its ring of dancing angels, and the plucked roses scattered among them are like those in the "Birth of Venus."

Much the same plan is adopted in the last of Sandro's paintings, which is evidently related to this one, the "Nativity" in the National Gallery, already referred to. Here again is an upper and a lower picture, and in the upper, the dancing angels re-appear against the "glory." Instead of roses, however, there are crowns and banderoles, and the angels carry olive branches. At the head of this picture is an inscription in base Greek which has been thus translated: "This picture was painted by me, Alessandro, at the end of 1500, during the troubles of Italy, at the half time after the time which was prophesied in the eleventh chapter of St. John the Evangelist, and the Second Woe of the Apocalypse, and when Satan shall be loosed on the earth for three years and a half. After which the devil shall be enchained, and we shall see him trodden under foot as in this picture." It indicates Sandro's belief in a final reconciliation and justification, and refers plainly to the execution of Savonarola which had occurred just three and a half years before. Thus it forms a kind of sequel to the "Calumny." While the picture is somewhat navely explanatory, it is filled with intense feeling, and suggests the influence upon Sandro of the Prate's favourite master, Fra Angelico.[2]

It is generally believed to be the last of his paintings, but it seems probable that the drawings to ill.u.s.trate the Divine Comedy may belong to a time even later. They were made for a second-cousin and namesake of the Magnificent, Lorenzo di Pier Francesco, who died in 1503 and was a patron of Michael Angelo as well as of Sandro. The original MS. was purchased about the beginning of last century by the then Duke of Hamilton, but was sold in 1882 to the Prussian Government. It is now in the Berlin Museum, and contains eighty-five drawings in silver-point, finished with pen and ink. Eight other drawings belonging to the same series are in the Vatican Library. As eight are still missing, the complete series would have consisted of a hundred, in addition to the chart of the Inferno.

The drawings vary much in value and interest. Many of them are deficient in both respects; but some are perfect examples of his art.

Such is the design for Paradise I., with its slender trees bowing their tops to the morning breeze in the meadows watered by the circling stream Eunoe, over which Beatrice and Dante rise together against the wind, lifted by the light of Divine Love. It is full of aspiration and wide air, and has a curious j.a.panese quality. Very different in suggestion is that of the Chained Giants (Inferno x.x.xI.) which recalls some early German work, and reminds us that Sandro may have been influenced by the drawings of Schongauer, and other Northern artists and designers. Vasari says that Botticelli was a prolific designer, and some of his drawings, notably the exquisite "Abundance," in the British Museum, are among his finest works.

[1] 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. It is supposed to have been painted about 1490.

[2] There are many other uncertain pictures which were formerly credited to Botticelli; and several of these still parade under the master's name in our National Gallery. No. 275, reproduced in this volume, may have issued from his workshop. It has San Gallo's name written on the reverse side. Neither Nos. 782 nor 1126 are by Sandro.

But the genuine works in London include the attractive portrait of a young Florentine (No. 626); and the two "Adorations" ascribed to his pupil Filippino Lippi (592, 1033). The Print-Room in the British Museum has the exquisite drawing of the "Abundance" (Silver-point). In the bas.e.m.e.nt of the National Gallery are copies (Arundel Society) of the Sixtine Frescoes, the "Birth of Venus," "Spring," and the best of the Lemmi frescoes. Facsimiles of the drawings for the Divine Comedy have been published. The other London pictures usually accredited to Sandro are the "Madonna" (partly by his hand) in Mr. Heseltine's collection and the panels already referred to in that of Mrs Mond, all belonging to his later years. The former shows the use Botticelli made of gold to give a sunny sheen between the spectator and distant hillside.

V

In reviewing the subjects chosen by Sandro for his pictures, one is struck by certain characteristic omissions. With the exception of a most perfunctory and even grotesque panel of Christ rising from the Sepulchre, forming part of the S. Barnabas predella, of the doubtful "Pieta" at Munich, which may have been partially executed by Sandro after Savonarola's great sermons in Holy Week, and the figure of Christ thrice introduced as an afterthought into the first of the Sixtine frescoes; Botticelli has only painted the central figure of Christian art as an infant. Twice only has he introduced the figure of G.o.d the Father into his work, and then without distinction. 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 Sh.e.l.ley. He is one of those who feel the wind of the spirit blowing out toward new worlds. He loved the wind, and all things that the wind caresses, trees, draperies, floating hair, and the naked body.

Also he loved the light and hated darkness. He had inspired moments when he beheld that the old order of the mediaeval world had pa.s.sed already away, and the hearts of men were turning to the pure worship of living incarnate loveliness--the mystery of a re-born and immortal pleasure, Venus Anadyomene, beheld with mystic sight. But in that age it was a prophetic vision, and his own eyes failed him. He died in a time of darkness. For four centuries his visions were forgotten, to be beheld again by us with a renewal of the wonder and aspiration, the pa.s.sionate desire for freedom and for beauty, out of which they came.