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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Botticelli
+
+Author: Henry Bryan Binns
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2012 [EBook #39942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOTTICELLI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
+
+EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE
+
+
+
+
+
+BOTTICELLI
+
+
+
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS.  From the tempera on canvas in the
+Uffizi.  (Frontispiece)
+
+This picture is generally regarded as the supreme achievement of
+Botticelli's genius.  It was probably painted about 1485, after his
+return from Rome.  The canvas measures 5 ft 8 in. by 9 ft 1 in., so
+that the figures are nearly life size.  No reproduction can do justice
+to the exquisite delicacy of expression in the original.  Something of
+the same quality will be found in the "Mars and Venus" in the National
+Gallery, which was probably painted about the same time.  The two
+figures on the left are usually described as Zephyrus and Zephyritis,
+representing the south and south-west winds: that on the right may be
+one of the Hours of Homer's Hymn, or possibly the Spring.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+
+
+
+BOTTICELLI
+
+
+
+BY HENRY BRYAN BINNS
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+  REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+
+
+[Illustration: title page logo]
+
+
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+The plates are printed by BEMROSE DALZIEL, LTD., Watford
+
+The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Plate
+
+    I. The Birth of Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+           From the tempera on canvas in the Uffizi
+
+
+   II. Spring
+           From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy
+
+
+  III. Portrait of a Man
+           From the panel in the Florence Academy
+
+
+   IV. The Madonna of the Magnificat, known also as the Coronation
+         of the Virgin
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+    V. The Madonna of the Pomegranate
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+   VI. The Annunciation
+           From the panel in the Uffizi
+
+
+  VII. The Virgin and Child with St. John and an Angel
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+
+
+ VIII. The Virgin and Child by an Open Window
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Botticelli]
+
+
+From Florence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, men looked
+into a new dawn.  When the Turk took Constantinople in 1443, the "glory
+that was Greece" was carried to her by fleeing scholars, and she became
+for one brilliant generation the home of that Platonic worship of
+beauty and philosophy which had been so long an exile from the hearts
+of men.  I say Platonic, because it was especially to Plato, the
+mystic, that she turned, possessed still by something of the mystical
+intensity of her own great poet, himself an exile.  When, in 1444, Pope
+Eugenius left her to return to Rome, Florence was ready to welcome this
+new wanderer, the spirit of the ancient world.  And the almost childish
+wonder with which she received that august guest is evident in all the
+marvellous work of the years that followed, in none more than in that
+of Sandro Botticelli.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE II.--SPRING.  (From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy)
+
+The date of this painting is much debated.  It may probably be about
+1478, before the Roman visit.  It is somewhat larger than the "Venus,"
+but the figures are of similar size.  Reading from the left they are
+usually described as Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Primavera the
+Spring-maiden, Flora, and Zephyrus.  The robed Venus is in striking
+contrast with that of the later picture.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--SPRING.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+He indeed was born in the very year of that new advent, lived through
+the period of its sunshine into one of storms--Stygian darkness and
+frightful flashes of light--and went down at last, an old broken man,
+staggering between two crutches, to his grave.  His times were those of
+Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was a few years his junior, the
+unacknowledged despot of the Tuscan Republic, a prince, cold and hard
+as steel, worthy to be an example for young Macchiavelli, yet none the
+less a poet, and a devoted lover both of philosophy and of all
+beautiful things.
+
+It was an age when a new synthesis was being made, and old enemies
+reconciled, so that men were less ready then to blame than to admire,
+and the best feeling of the time was that of reverent wonder.  It is
+this which, more than any other painter, Botticelli has expressed for
+us.  His pictures are living witnesses to the reverence which, in his
+day, the mystery of human life evoked in spirits such as his.
+
+But while this is true, and true in the first degree of Sandro and his
+work, they express besides other moods, and betray other influences.
+The later quatrocento was the time not only of Lorenzo and the
+Platonists, but of Savonarola also, the last great figure of the Middle
+Ages, strangely proclaiming the new days; and with him, of foreign
+incursions into Italy and Florence, of violence and all the black-brood
+of religious and civil strife.  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 sometimes, and increasingly, a poignant questioning of
+the sibyls.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The life of the painter appears to have been uneventful, and all that
+is known of him can be told in little space.  His father was a
+Florentine tanner, and his elder brother followed the same trade, and
+was nicknamed Botticello, "little barrel."  The family patronymic was
+dei Filipepi, but the painter signed himself "Sandro di Mariano," the
+latter being his father's name.  Sandro (Alexander) was, perhaps, the
+son of a second marriage, for he was young enough to have been the
+child of his brother Giovanni, the tanner, whose nickname became
+affixed to him.  He was probably born in 1444, in a house close to All
+Saints (Ognissanti) Cemetery in the present Via della Porcellana.  His
+father was now in middle life, and a prosperous man.  The lad was
+delicate, quick and wilful, perhaps a spoilt child.  He was older than
+usual when he went at about fifteen into a goldsmith's shop, doubtless
+that of Antonio his second brother.  But he was not long contented
+there.  A year or two later he was studying painting under that famous
+friar, Fra Lippo Lippi.  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.  How long he remained with his master is uncertain,
+but it is probable that the fruitful relationship continued until after
+he came of age.  Perhaps he was twenty-four when he returned to
+Florence, and became associated with the brothers Pollajuolo, for whom,
+in 1470, he executed the first commission of which we have record.  But
+as he was now twenty-six, this cannot be his earliest work.  There is a
+hillside shrine near Settignano, which contains a Madonna--Madonna
+della Vannella--formerly ascribed to the friar, but which is now
+believed to be one of the earliest efforts of his pupil.  And in the
+National Gallery the long panel of the "Adoration" officially ascribed
+to "Filippino Lippi" has by general consent been transferred to Sandro,
+and assigned to the period before his association with the Pollajuoli.
+
+Here it should be said that none of Botticelli's paintings is clearly
+signed and dated; and even indirect documentary proofs are wanting in
+the case of the majority of his works.  Much has therefore to be
+decided by the doubtful and highly technical tests of internal
+evidence.  These are rendered more difficult by the receptivity of this
+artist, who came late to maturity and was throughout his life
+profoundly affected by external influence; but on the other hand, his
+work has certain mannerisms as well as excellences special to it, which
+even his imitators and students failed to reproduce.
+
+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; and the scientific studies of anatomy and
+perspective in which he was now encouraged, increased his power of
+expression without distracting it from its proper purpose.
+
+In 1469 Fra Filippo died, and three years later his son Filippino, then
+fourteen years old, became Sandro's pupil.  From this it would appear
+that by 1472, when he was twenty-eight years of age, Botticelli had
+left the Pollajuoli, and had a workshop, or bottega, of his own, in the
+family house where the income-tax returns of 1480 describe him as still
+working.  Here in 1473 Lorenzo the Magnificent, who four years earlier
+had become master of Florence, commissioned him to paint a St.
+Sebastian; and from this time forward the Medici gave him frequent
+proofs of their appreciation.  In the following year he went to Pisa,
+where he had some prospect of a large commission.  This, however, fell
+through; he failed, Vasari tells us, to satisfy himself in his trial
+picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, a subject not well suited to
+his mind.  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;
+but most of all we note the changed theme, first among those classical
+subjects which the artist was in a special sense to make his own.
+Botticelli painted portraits both of Giuliano dei Medici and his adored
+lady, Simonetta, the beautiful young wife of Marco Vespucci; and,
+though these are lost, it is generally believed that Simonetta's lovely
+and innocent charm of face and character inspired many of his happiest
+fancies.  She died in 1476, and two years later, Giuliano was
+assassinated during Mass in the Duomo.  Sandro was employed by his
+brother--who himself had narrowly escaped death on the same
+occasion--to commemorate the assassins' shame by painting their
+portraits on the face of the Palazzo Publico.  A task more suited to
+his temper was the celebration of Lorenzo's diplomatic success, when in
+1479 he succeeded in detaching the King of Naples from a hostile
+alliance against Florence.  This occasioned the painting of "Pallas and
+the Centaur," now on the walls of the Pitti, one of Sandro's most
+consummate pieces of decorative work.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF A MAN.  (From the panel in the Florence Academy)
+
+This portrait of a young man holding a medal of Cosimo dei Medici is
+interestingly related to the only other undisputed separate portrait of
+Sandro's, that in the National Gallery.  It is supposed to represent
+Giovanni, younger son of Cosimo, who died in 1461: if this be correct
+the portrait cannot have been painted by Botticelli for several years
+after its subject's death.  There is little convincing evidence on the
+matter.  The panel measures 21 by 14 inches.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF A MAN.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+The enumeration of these commissions shows that the artist had become
+closely associated with the Medici.  Lorenzo's palace and country
+villas were at this time the centre of the most brilliant group of
+scholars, philosophers, poets, and artists in the world.  In this
+atmosphere Botticelli's genius came to flower.  He appears, moreover,
+to have enjoyed the friendship of Leonardo da Vinci, a man eight years
+his junior, who had been studying in Verocchio's workshop, hard by that
+of the Pollajuoli.  His was a spirit yet more subtle than Sandro's
+own--subtle even with the subtlety of the serpent--and the two men must
+have understood one another intimately.  Botticelli himself was a
+pleasant, even a jovial man, but a man of moods.  Like Leonardo he
+never married.
+
+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.  Thither they repaired with their assistants
+and other artists, probably remaining there during the greater part of
+the next three years.  Sandro is believed to have had some general
+oversight or arrangement of the whole work, while he himself
+contributed certain portraits of Popes, and three great frescoes
+occupying nearly a thousand square feet of the chapel walls.  During
+his prolonged stay in Rome he must also have painted some easel
+pictures; one, an "Adoration of the Magi," is now in St Petersburg.
+This Roman interlude in his Florentine life, marked by direct rivalry
+and daily contact with artists of genius different from his own, is in
+every respect central in his story.  He was now in his maturity, a man
+approaching forty years of age, working on a conspicuous task, in that
+Eternal City to which the greatest sons of Florence were ever the
+foremost to offer spiritual homage.
+
+But it may be doubted whether the task itself was calculated to evoke
+his highest powers and most characteristic qualities.  Neither in its
+subjects, its scale, nor the conditions under which it was
+accomplished, was it well suited to Sandro's genius, and while the
+frescoes contain noble passages and inimitable illustrations of his
+art, they cannot be regarded as among his masterpieces.
+
+The frescoes were completed and the chapel opened in August 1483.
+Vasari tells how great renown, above that of all his fellows, in the
+work, Sandro gained in Rome, and what large sums he received and
+squandered there.  Before settling again in his own city, he worked
+with Ghirlandajo upon the decorations of the Medici Villa at Volterra.
+
+From 1480 to 1490 he was probably regarded as the greatest of living
+masters in Florence, and was busy with many commissions.  To this
+period belong several of his greatest works, probably the "Birth of
+Venus," greatest of them all, with the Madonnas of the Pomegranate and
+of St. Barnabas, certainly the Lemmi frescoes and the Bardi Madonna.
+Venus and the frescoes are in the perfect manner which characterises
+his classical subjects.  The others are marked by some decline in
+technical handling.  But in saying this, one must add that Sandro's
+work is, in all periods, amazingly unequal, alike in execution and
+conception.  One almost wishes indeed that Vasari's dictum, that he
+worked "when he was minded," was even more true than it appears to be.
+For Sandro's subtle, wilful, whimsical genius hardly ever expressed its
+true nature in mere rivalry with other artists, or in the service of
+ecclesiastical patrons.  Yet his undisputed works are too few, hardly
+fifty in all, for us really to wish any away.  Even the panels of the
+St. Barnabas predella, and the tondo of the Ambrosiana Madonna can
+hardly be spared.
+
+We come now to the later and stormier years of his life and work--years
+dominated for him and for Florence by the figure of the Dominican Prior
+of San Marco.  Savonarola had already been for a time in the city, but
+it was not till 1490 that he made it his home, and began to fill it, as
+he was soon to fill the whole world, with his prophetic denunciations
+of corruption both in the Republic and in the Church.  1492 saw not
+only the death of Lorenzo, and with him of the golden age in Florence,
+but the enthronement of a Borgia as Father of the Church.  It was the
+end of an epoch.  For a few years the prior held the city by the power
+and fascination of his inspired personality.  He welcomed Charles VIII.
+of France as a new Cyrus, the sword of the Lord, restorer and protector
+of the liberties of the Republic; and when the king and his army became
+a public menace, it was he who bade them on their way.  In 1496 he was
+at grips with the Pope.  But two years later he had lost his hold upon
+Florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the
+populace.
+
+Sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than Pico della Mirandola, the
+beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these
+troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the
+lion-hearted preacher.  His own brother Simone, with whom he lived, was
+one of the Prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause.  There
+can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by
+Savonarola.  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.  In 1503 Botticelli was
+one of the artists consulted as to the position which should be
+allotted to the great sculptor's "David."  He still shared some small
+property with his brother, but his principal patrons were dead, the
+times were out of joint, and he was seeking consolation in the study of
+Dante.  A folio volume of drawings by his hand, illustrating the Divine
+Comedy, remains uncompleted; whether owing to the death of him for whom
+it was intended, or of the artist himself, we cannot tell.  Sandro died
+on May 17, 1510, and was buried in All Saints.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE IV.--THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION
+OF THE VIRGIN.  (From the tondo in the Uffizi)
+
+Probably painted about 1479, this is the most perfect example of
+Botticelli's circular pictures.  The lines of the composition have been
+compared with those of the corolla of an open rose.  The colour is rich
+and harmonious, and every detail exquisitely finished.  The Virgin is
+still writing her song of the Magnificat, while the Child handles a
+symbolic pomegranate.  The tondo is 44 inches in diameter.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS
+THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Botticelli was a Florentine in as intimate a sense as was Dante
+himself, and nowhere but in his native city can his work be fully
+appreciated.  It is true that notable examples of his art have been
+carried away from time to time to other places, and that pictures
+attributed to him are still more widely scattered.  New York has one of
+his most beautiful early works, the Madonna formerly belonging to
+Prince Chigi, for whose sale to America the unpatriotic Prince was
+heavily fined; St. Petersburg has an "Adoration of the Magi" belonging
+to Sandro's years in Rome.  The "St. Sebastian" painted for Lorenzo has
+found its way to Berlin, where there is besides the Bardi Madonna; the
+badly damaged frescoes celebrating the wedding of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
+are at the head of a staircase in the Louvre; Rome has the Sixtine
+frescoes; Milan has two Madonnas; Bergamo has a panel; while our own
+National Gallery has five works, ranging from the earliest to the
+latest period.
+
+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.  It is in the pale cool colours of early morning, enriched by the
+heavy red of the robe which is about to embrace the wanderer's lovely
+form.  There is a great sense of space behind her, over the grey sea.
+All about her the wind blows, making the light very clean and clear.
+She stands upon the edge of the great gleaming shell which has carried
+her, tilting it down with her weight as she leans forward to step
+ashore.  Her figure, tall, slender, and quite central in the picture,
+feels the wind and light about it, but not shrinkingly.  It floats and
+moves, yet without consciousness of movement, as it were a somnambulist
+moving across the sea.  The pearly luminous quality of this living
+ethereal body, the heavy golden tresses of the long hair that hangs
+heavily against the wind, which with one hand she holds, while she lays
+the other dreamily on her breast, these are in the most perfect harmony
+with that flower-like immortal wistfulness which Sandro has put into
+her face.  In striking contrast with this sea-born vision of Love, this
+strange visitant from an unknown world, stands the comparatively
+prosaic maiden who welcomes her and is about to wrap her in a rich
+mantle.  This earth maiden, the representative of the Spring, in her
+pale gown sprigged with cornflowers, and her long plaits of dark hair,
+is garlanded, like the goddess in "Pallas and the Centaur," with olive
+branches.  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.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.  (From the tondo in the
+Uffizi)
+
+A companion to the earlier tondo, this was probably not painted before
+Sandro's return from Rome, about the same time as the "Venus."  It is
+broader in treatment and of more sombre colour than the "Magnificat."
+The eyes of the Child, who raises his hand in blessing, look straight
+out of the picture, in marked contrast to the attitude of the earlier
+work.  There is a striking resemblance in many details, but the two
+pictures are quite distinct in character and feeling.  This tondo
+measures 56 inches.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+Any attempt to convey by description the mystical significance of this
+decorative design would obviously be idle.  Yet to miss that
+significance is to miss all.  Regarded as the mere illustration of some
+verse of Politian's, or of Homer's hymn, the picture is open to endless
+criticism--the figure of Venus is out of drawing; the promontories,
+waves, and laurel trees are bare shorthand notes.  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.  It contains portraits of the Medicis
+and, more important to us, of the painter himself.[2]  Detached from
+the others he stands in the right-hand corner, under the peacock,
+wrapped in an orange mantle, gazing at us over his shoulder--a tall
+figure of a man with powerful enigmatic face.  The composition of this
+picture, with its thirty figures and varied colouring, has been often
+and rightly praised.  In spite of the clear individualisation of
+personalities and the elaboration of magnificent accessories, the unity
+and balance of design with its semi-circular grouping and the nobility
+and distinction of its lines, are well kept.  If it was painted in
+rivalry with Ghirlandajo, for whose work it was at one time mistaken,
+it is marked by an intensity of realisation foreign to that worthy
+painter.
+
+These two pictures of the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, the "Venus" and the
+"Adoration," are representative of the two realms in which Sandro
+worked; the one, of pure imagination, wedding Platonic ideas with a new
+conception of the possibilities of decorative art; the other, of the
+patrons and atmosphere of fifteenth-century Florence.  Very few of his
+pictures belong exclusively to the one realm or the other, but to one
+or other belongs the influence which predominates in any one.  Of the
+first class are notably the remaining works painted with classical
+motives.  Foremost among these is the "Spring" of the Florence Academy,
+with its inimitable group of the Graces dancing in a marvellous rhythm
+of flowing intertwining lines, somewhat over-mannered, it is true, and
+with feeling a little forced, but yet of quite unique grace and
+intensity of conception.  Much wordy debate over the literary
+signification of this painting has come between the vital meaning of
+the design and those who behold it.  We may find suggestions in Lucian
+or Alberti, in Politian's or Lorenzo's verses, but as a work of art it
+derives only secondarily from any of these.  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.  This picture, in which
+the figures are nearly life size, while it has much in common with the
+"Venus," belongs to an earlier period, and is probably nearer in date
+to the "Adoration" already described, painted when the artist was about
+thirty-four years old.
+
+Some two years later he painted his "Pallas and the Centaur."  The
+figure of the goddess, beautiful as it is, lacks something of the
+vitality and motion of the "Spring" and the "Venus"; perhaps the artist
+has given too much thought to the lovely wreathing of the symbolic
+olive boughs about her breast and arms and head; but on the other hand,
+the melancholy Centaur whom she leads by his heavy forelock is one of
+the most perfect expressions of his art.  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; she is wreathed with olive, her auburn hair blows
+out behind her, and her feet are covered with a sort of orange buskin.
+Nothing could be finer than the contrast she presents with the dark,
+wild, pathetic figure of "Chaos and Old Night" whom she is leading
+captive.
+
+The most beautiful of Sandro's earlier works, a little panel only 10
+inches by 8, representing the return of Judith to Bethulia after the
+slaying of Holofernes, is in the Uffizi.  It has suffered from
+repainting, the figure of Judith having been shortened and its movement
+limited by the drawing back of the right foot at least half an inch, so
+that it does not now correspond with that of Abra following so close
+behind with her horrid burden; but in spite of this, it retains a
+wonderful joyous serenity of light, line, and colour, and the same
+windy clearness of air and buoyant rhythmical movement as distinguishes
+the "Venus."  The figure of Judith is so closely related to that of the
+Fortezza, painted for the Pollajuoli in 1470, and exhibited in the same
+gallery, that it may well belong to the years immediately succeeding
+it, when Sandro was between twenty-six and thirty years of age.  The
+companion panel of Holofernes, though interesting, is much inferior as
+a design and is somewhat comic in its frank and ghastly violence; it
+was evidently painted while the artist was under the influence of the
+Pollajuoli.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE VI.--THE ANNUNCIATION.  (From the panel in the Uffizi)
+
+This interesting picture is probably only in part the work of
+Botticelli.  It seems to have been produced in his workshop about 1490
+for the monks of Cestello.  It is less harmonious and convincing in
+colour than Sandro's masterpieces, but is redeemed by the living
+movement expressed in the figure of Gabriel, which is usually regarded
+as his work.  This figure is related to two others of his angels, one
+in the Ambrosiana tondo, the other in the predella of the "Coronation."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE ANNUNCIATION.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+There are two other masterpieces which belong to this division of
+Sandro's work, but they are neither of them in Florence.  The
+beautiful, but sadly mutilated fresco of Giovanna (Albizzi) Tornabuoni,
+with Venus and the Graces, long hidden under coats of whitewash in a
+villa near Fiesole, was discovered in 1873 by Dr. Lemmi, then its
+owner, and carefully cleaned and removed.  In 1882 it was acquired by
+the French government.  In spite of the blank patches, and the great
+cracks which break its surface, this remains one of the most gracious
+and captivating of Sandro's works.  It has the joyousness of
+flower-like colour, the breadth and simplicity of treatment, and withal
+the virginal quality which, in his best moments, were characteristic of
+the artist.  The masterly contrast between the flowing moving lines and
+strange symbolic faces of the four visitors, and the upright demure
+girl with the kerchief on her head who receives them is very striking.
+The second fresco, of Giovanna's husband, Lorenzo, introduced into the
+company of the Liberal Arts and Philosophy, is less interesting.  A
+third fell to pieces immediately after discovery.  All were painted
+about the year 1486, probably a little later than the "Venus."
+
+The remaining picture of this group is the so-called "Mars and Venus"
+in our own National Gallery, a long panel designed to stand above a
+doorway, and probably painted about the same time as the more famous
+"Spring."  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.  The little satyrs with
+their roguish baby faces, curly goats' flanks, and budding horns, who
+play with the warrior's lance and helm, blow the conch in his ear, and
+wriggle through his breastplate, seem to have been suggested by a
+passage in Lucian describing the marriage of Alexander.  But the
+subject of the picture need not now detain us, nor need the long
+outstretched figure of the dreaming warrior; its charm is in the
+exquisitely realised youthful grace of the lady in her long white robe,
+leaning upon a crimson cushion with the dark grove of laurels behind
+her.  She is of the same spiritual family as the Graces, and the
+central figure of Venus in the "Spring."  She may indeed be Simonetta,
+perhaps Simonetta already deceased, of whom her lover dreams; but,
+whatever her name, her face and figure, and from her the whole picture,
+is radiant with that singleness and intensity of artistic conception,
+which gives to some of Sandro's pictures the power of suggesting a sort
+of immortality of life.  And they have a surcharge of meaning, an
+enigmatic quality like that of life itself, which is seen in no other
+pictures of the time with the exception of Leonardo's--and in Sandro's
+the enigma suggests no sinister solution.  His women are creations of
+passionate love and human intimacy, but withal they have an abiding
+quality which only a very reverent and chaste lover, a lover not unlike
+Pico della Mirandola, could have adored and chosen.  The date of this
+picture is quite uncertain.  The lady's face is curiously related to
+the faces in the Lemmi fresco described above.
+
+
+[1] Though his contemporaries were beginning to use the new medium of
+oil for their easel paintings, Botticelli adhered to _tempera_, or
+distemper, in which yolk of egg was generally the vehicle employed.
+Nearly all his pictures, except, of course, his frescoes, are upon
+wood.  The "Pallas and the Centaur," "Venus," and "Nativity" of 1500,
+are however on prepared canvas.
+
+[2] There are two separate portraits by Sandro which are full of
+character and interest: the portrait of a youth in our National
+Gallery, and of a man holding a medal in the Florence Academy.  Other
+portraits, such as those of Giuliano dei Medici at Berlin and Bergamo,
+and of Simonetta, may have come from his workshop, but are not now
+numbered among the master's own works.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+We must turn to the principal pictures in Botticelli's other, and as I
+think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which
+exist between the two groups.
+
+The first of these is the "Calumny," painted to the description given
+in Alberti's Treatise on Painting of a picture by Apelles.  It is a
+comparatively small panel, 2 feet by 3, containing ten figures, and an
+elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered
+with friezes and bas-reliefs.  It belongs to Sandro's later years, and
+is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence.  One can hardly
+look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of Innocence, with
+crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the
+ladylike Calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive.
+Their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of Truth, standing on
+the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven.
+She is intimately related to the figure of Venus Anadyomene--but here
+she seems tragically out of place.  The fancy lavished upon the
+bas-reliefs bears witness to Sandro's whimsical imagination even in the
+midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when Florence was full of
+the false spirit suggested in this panel.
+
+With the "Calumny" I must mention, though only in passing, the several
+panels of the life of Saint Zenobius, two of which are in the
+collection of Mrs. Ludwig Mond.  Less theatrical, but often more
+violent in manner than the "Calumny," and not less definitely of the
+genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour,
+geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white.  These,
+with the illustrative panels from the stories of Virginia and Lucretia,
+were probably painted after 1490, for wedding chests.
+
+A more important group of pictures comprises the six--including the
+"Adoration" already described--which centre in the three figures of the
+Holy Family, whether they be called Adorations or Nativities; and the
+Sixtine frescoes.  All these pictures are full of figures, most of them
+are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge
+Leonardo's assertion that Botticelli was indifferent to this part of
+his art.  The two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid
+"Adoration"--the "Adoration" now in St. Petersburg, and the "Scenes
+from the Life of Moses" in the Sixtine Chapel, were painted about the
+same time in Rome.  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.  This St.
+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."
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE VII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL.  (From the
+panel in the National Gallery)
+
+This beautiful painting is no longer ascribed to Botticelli; but it is
+obviously an indirect, if not a direct, product of his genius.  The
+Virgin is distinct in type from those of the master, and the painting
+of the Child is dissimilar.  The name of Giuliano da San Gallo, one of
+Sandro's friends, and a famous Florentine architect, is written across
+the back of the picture.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN
+ANGEL.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+But in this marvellous central scene of a large fresco, the very sheep
+are so intensely realised as to have an individuality over and above
+their mere sheepiness.  By the well, under the great oak tree of the
+Papal (Rovere) family, Moses is pouring water into the troughs for
+Zipporah and her sister.  His long luxuriant hair falls about a
+sensitive face.  Behind and below him are the sheep, so woolly that you
+can in fancy pass your hand over their fleeces.  On the opposite side
+of the well are the two Midianitish maidens, standing out, the bright
+central motive of the whole design; one with her back turned and hands
+extended, the other walking in a sort of dream, her head drooping
+forward under the long thick locks of its heavy hair.  A skin full of
+fruit is slung round her waist, and a distaff is in her hand.  About
+this group, whose lines follow those of the well-mouth, the painter has
+contrived to introduce half-a-dozen other incidents from Moses' life.
+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; and through his
+power of realisation, this little terrier, a mere accessory in the
+foreground of a great fresco filled with details, has a life of its
+own.  Thus, at its best, his work is not representation at all, nor
+mere illustration; it is the re-creation in a new medium of the
+creatures and ideas he has conceived, even to their least
+characteristics.
+
+The two other Sixtine frescoes represent the "Punishment of Korah,"
+painted in celebration of the revolt and suicide of the Archbishop of
+Krain; and that known either as the "Leper's Offering," or the
+"Temptation of Christ," which was also intended to flatter the
+sensibilities of the Pope.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+We now come to the second great division of Sandro's pictures, his
+Madonnas and Saints, tondos, panels, and altar-pieces, painted for
+different patrons at intervals during his lifetime.  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 "; between her and the group of
+angels on the left is a distant landscape with curving river; behind
+her shoulder, supporting on one side the celestial crown, which is so
+much too large to rest upon her head, is a beautiful young angel of a
+distinctive type which hardly recurs in Sandro's work.  This
+composition, with its intricately curved, and unobtrusively harmonious
+lines, so perfectly adapted to the circular form, has often been
+praised.  In the later tondo, the Madonna with the Pomegranate, there
+is no distant scene, but the sense of infinite vista is conveyed by the
+far-away, pensive expression, not only of the central figure with her
+slender drooping shoulders, but, as I think, of the Child himself.  The
+grouping is simple, but less perfect than in the earlier work; and
+there is a lack of harmony between the secular little beings with their
+wings, flowers, and singing books, and the rapt Mother and Child, which
+we did not feel in the other, where Madonna herself, guided by the
+Babe, is writing her song of praise.  But here Botticelli has
+concentrated the religious feeling of the picture in Mary's face, and
+in it he has struck again the mystical note which vibrates through the
+whole of his "Venus."  Much has been said of the misery of this
+Madonna; for myself, I see in her face far more of the rapt vision of
+one who sees immortal things in a mystery.  She is not glad because of
+them, but her whole thought and being is separated by them from the
+things that change, being set upon the things that endure.
+
+With these two tondos, I must mention for beauty and unity of
+conception the "Chigi" Madonna and that in the Poldo-Pezzoli Gallery at
+Milan.  The former is generally regarded as among his earlier works.
+An open casement shows a river winding among wooded hills, a church
+steeple having been painted in as an afterthought.  Mary's attitude, as
+she fingers the ears of corn thrust among the grapes in the bowl
+presented by a mysterious garlanded angel, is not unlike that of the
+"Magnificat," to which the whole composition is related.  But Mary
+herself is of a very different type, more nearly related to the Madonna
+at Milan of which I shall now speak.  She, also, is seated by a window,
+and like her sister of the "Magnificat" she is reading in a missal with
+decipherable words.  As in that picture too, the Child looks up at her
+with his hand on hers, a crown of thorns circling his chubby wrist.
+The colour is rich and harmonious; Mary being magnificently coiffed and
+clad.  Another Madonna in Milan, that in the Ambrosiana Gallery, bears
+some resemblance both to the Virgin just described, and to her of the
+"Magnificat."  As in the Poldo-Pezzoli Madonna, the glories are either
+repainted or unusually elaborate, and Mary has a star embroidered on
+her left shoulder.  Here again is the open missal, but now quite
+undecipherable, resting upon a cushion.  It is possible to conceive of
+the Babe being another version of that in the Poldo-Pezzoli picture.
+But this Ambrosiana Madonna with her unimaginative face and
+uncompromising attitude, this grotesquely sentimental Child, these
+three spiritless attitudinising angels prancing about on their errands,
+is perhaps the least pleasing or characteristic of all the works now
+attributed to the master.  The picture is conventional to a degree; a
+great canopy hangs in space over the Virgin, between its curtains are
+seen the hills, towers, and river of a distant scene.[1]
+
+A somewhat similar canopy overhangs the Virgin in the Madonna of St.
+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 God," is very nobly 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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
+Titian's "Assumption"--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 naïvely 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 illustrate 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 Eunoë, 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 Japanese quality.  Very different in
+suggestion is that of the Chained Giants (Inferno XXXI.) 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 basement 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 God 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 Shelley.  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 mediæval world had passed
+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
+passionate desire for freedom and for beauty, out of which they came.
+
+
+
+
+Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.
+
+Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+
+  IN THE SAME SERIES
+
+  ARTIST.          EDITOR.
+
+  VELAZQUEZ.       S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  REYNOLDS.        S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  TURNER.          LEWIS HIND.
+  ROMKEY.          LEWIS HIND.
+  GREUZE.          ALICE EYRE MACKLIN.
+  BOTTICELLI.      HENRY B. BINNS.
+  ROSSETTI.        LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+  BELLINI.         GEORGE HAY.
+  FRA ANGELICO.    JAMES MASON.
+  LEIGHTON.        A. LYS BALDRY.
+  REMBRANDT.       JOSEF ISRAELS.
+  WATTS.           W. L. HARE.
+  TITIAN.          S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  RAPHAEL.         PAUL G. KONODY.
+
+  _Others in Preparation_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
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+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg E-text of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+</title>
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Botticelli
+
+Author: Henry Bryan Binns
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2012 [EBook #39942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOTTICELLI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<br /><br /><br />
+<a id="img-cover"></a>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-cover.jpg" alt="Cover art" />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<br /><br /><br />
+MASTERPIECES <br />
+IN COLOUR
+<br /><br />
+EDITED BY <br />
+T. LEMAN HARE
+<br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+BOTTICELLI
+<br /><br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl1-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE I.&mdash;THE BIRTH OF VENUS.  From the <br />
+tempera on canvas in the Uffizi.  (Frontispiece)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+This picture is generally regarded as the supreme achievement of
+Botticelli's genius.  It was probably painted about 1485, after his
+return from Rome.  The canvas measures 5 ft 8 in. by 9 ft 1 in., so
+that the figures are nearly life size.  No reproduction can do justice
+to the exquisite delicacy of expression in the original.  Something of
+the same quality will be found in the "Mars and Venus" in the National
+Gallery, which was probably painted about the same time.  The two
+figures on the left are usually described as Zephyrus and Zephyritis,
+representing the south and south-west winds: that on the right may be
+one of the Hours of Homer's Hymn, or possibly the Spring.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl1.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl1-t.jpg" alt="PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE I.&mdash;THE BIRTH OF VENUS.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>
+<br /><br />
+BOTTICELLI
+</h1>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+<br /><br />
+BY HENRY BRYAN BINNS
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT<br />
+REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR<br />
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-title"></a>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-title.jpg" alt="title page logo" />
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+<br /><br />
+LONDON: T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK
+<br />
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+<br /><br /><br />
+1907
+</p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+The plates are printed by BEMROSE DALZIEL, LTD., Watford
+<br />
+The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+<br /><br /><br />
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+
+<pre class="contents">
+Plate
+
+    I. <a href="#img-pl1-t">The Birth of Venus</a> . . . . . . . . . . . . <i>Frontispiece</i>
+           From the tempera on canvas in the Uffizi
+
+
+   II. <a href="#img-pl2-t">Spring</a>
+           From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy
+
+
+  III. <a href="#img-pl3-t">Portrait of a Man</a>
+           From the panel in the Florence Academy
+
+
+   IV. <a href="#img-pl4-t">The Madonna of the Magnificat</a>, known also as the Coronation of the Virgin
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+    V. <a href="#img-pl5-t">The Madonna of the Pomegranate</a>
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+   VI. <a href="#img-pl6-t">The Annunciation</a>
+           From the panel in the Uffizi
+
+
+  VII. <a href="#img-pl7-t">The Virgin and Child with St. John and an Angel</a>
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+
+
+ VIII. <a href="#img-pl8-t">The Virgin and Child by an Open Window</a>
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+</pre>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap00b"></a></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-011"></a>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-011.jpg" alt="Botticelli" />
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From Florence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, men looked
+into a new dawn.  When the Turk took Constantinople in 1443, the "glory
+that was Greece" was carried to her by fleeing scholars, and she became
+for one brilliant generation the home of that Platonic worship of
+beauty and philosophy which had been so long an exile from the hearts
+of men.  I say Platonic, because it was especially to Plato, the
+mystic, that she turned, possessed still by something of the mystical
+intensity of her own great poet, himself an exile.  When, in 1444, Pope
+Eugenius left her to return to Rome, Florence was ready to welcome this
+new wanderer, the spirit of the ancient world.  And the almost childish
+wonder with which she received that august guest is evident in all the
+marvellous work of the years that followed, in none more than in that
+of Sandro Botticelli.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl2-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE II.&mdash;SPRING.  (From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+The date of this painting is much debated.  It may probably be about
+1478, before the Roman visit.  It is somewhat larger than the "Venus,"
+but the figures are of similar size.  Reading from the left they are
+usually described as Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Primavera the
+Spring-maiden, Flora, and Zephyrus.  The robed Venus is in striking
+contrast with that of the later picture.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl2.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl2-t.jpg" alt="PLATE II.--SPRING." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE II.&mdash;SPRING.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+He indeed was born in the very year of that new advent, lived through
+the period of its sunshine into one of storms&mdash;Stygian darkness and
+frightful flashes of light&mdash;and went down at last, an old broken man,
+staggering between two crutches, to his grave.  His times were those of
+Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was a few years his junior, the
+unacknowledged despot of the Tuscan Republic, a prince, cold and hard
+as steel, worthy to be an example for young Macchiavelli, yet none the
+less a poet, and a devoted lover both of philosophy and of all
+beautiful things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an age when a new synthesis was being made, and old enemies
+reconciled, so that men were less ready then to blame than to admire,
+and the best feeling of the time was that of reverent wonder.  It is
+this which, more than any other painter, Botticelli has expressed for
+us.  His pictures are living witnesses to the reverence which, in his
+day, the mystery of human life evoked in spirits such as his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But while this is true, and true in the first degree of Sandro and his
+work, they express besides other moods, and betray other influences.
+The later quatrocento was the time not only of Lorenzo and the
+Platonists, but of Savonarola also, the last great figure of the Middle
+Ages, strangely proclaiming the new days; and with him, of foreign
+incursions into Italy and Florence, of violence and all the black-brood
+of religious and civil strife.  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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 sometimes, and increasingly, a poignant questioning of
+the sibyls.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+I
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The life of the painter appears to have been uneventful, and all that
+is known of him can be told in little space.  His father was a
+Florentine tanner, and his elder brother followed the same trade, and
+was nicknamed Botticello, "little barrel."  The family patronymic was
+dei Filipepi, but the painter signed himself "Sandro di Mariano," the
+latter being his father's name.  Sandro (Alexander) was, perhaps, the
+son of a second marriage, for he was young enough to have been the
+child of his brother Giovanni, the tanner, whose nickname became
+affixed to him.  He was probably born in 1444, in a house close to All
+Saints (Ognissanti) Cemetery in the present Via della Porcellana.  His
+father was now in middle life, and a prosperous man.  The lad was
+delicate, quick and wilful, perhaps a spoilt child.  He was older than
+usual when he went at about fifteen into a goldsmith's shop, doubtless
+that of Antonio his second brother.  But he was not long contented
+there.  A year or two later he was studying painting under that famous
+friar, Fra Lippo Lippi.  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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The friar was living in the neighbouring city of Prato, painting
+frescoes in the Cathedral, when Sandro joined him and became his
+favourite pupil.  How long he remained with his master is uncertain,
+but it is probable that the fruitful relationship continued until after
+he came of age.  Perhaps he was twenty-four when he returned to
+Florence, and became associated with the brothers Pollajuolo, for whom,
+in 1470, he executed the first commission of which we have record.  But
+as he was now twenty-six, this cannot be his earliest work.  There is a
+hillside shrine near Settignano, which contains a Madonna&mdash;Madonna
+della Vannella&mdash;formerly ascribed to the friar, but which is now
+believed to be one of the earliest efforts of his pupil.  And in the
+National Gallery the long panel of the "Adoration" officially ascribed
+to "Filippino Lippi" has by general consent been transferred to Sandro,
+and assigned to the period before his association with the Pollajuoli.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it should be said that none of Botticelli's paintings is clearly
+signed and dated; and even indirect documentary proofs are wanting in
+the case of the majority of his works.  Much has therefore to be
+decided by the doubtful and highly technical tests of internal
+evidence.  These are rendered more difficult by the receptivity of this
+artist, who came late to maturity and was throughout his life
+profoundly affected by external influence; but on the other hand, his
+work has certain mannerisms as well as excellences special to it, which
+even his imitators and students failed to reproduce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brothers Piero and Antonio Pollajuolo exercised a profound
+influence over the young artist.  Filippo had taught him to paint
+emotion&mdash;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&mdash;the fierce muscular
+swing and clutch of struggle.  To some extent Sandro was already a man
+standing upon his own feet; and the scientific studies of anatomy and
+perspective in which he was now encouraged, increased his power of
+expression without distracting it from its proper purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1469 Fra Filippo died, and three years later his son Filippino, then
+fourteen years old, became Sandro's pupil.  From this it would appear
+that by 1472, when he was twenty-eight years of age, Botticelli had
+left the Pollajuoli, and had a workshop, or bottega, of his own, in the
+family house where the income-tax returns of 1480 describe him as still
+working.  Here in 1473 Lorenzo the Magnificent, who four years earlier
+had become master of Florence, commissioned him to paint a St.
+Sebastian; and from this time forward the Medici gave him frequent
+proofs of their appreciation.  In the following year he went to Pisa,
+where he had some prospect of a large commission.  This, however, fell
+through; he failed, Vasari tells us, to satisfy himself in his trial
+picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, a subject not well suited to
+his mind.  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;
+but most of all we note the changed theme, first among those classical
+subjects which the artist was in a special sense to make his own.
+Botticelli painted portraits both of Giuliano dei Medici and his adored
+lady, Simonetta, the beautiful young wife of Marco Vespucci; and,
+though these are lost, it is generally believed that Simonetta's lovely
+and innocent charm of face and character inspired many of his happiest
+fancies.  She died in 1476, and two years later, Giuliano was
+assassinated during Mass in the Duomo.  Sandro was employed by his
+brother&mdash;who himself had narrowly escaped death on the same
+occasion&mdash;to commemorate the assassins' shame by painting their
+portraits on the face of the Palazzo Publico.  A task more suited to
+his temper was the celebration of Lorenzo's diplomatic success, when in
+1479 he succeeded in detaching the King of Naples from a hostile
+alliance against Florence.  This occasioned the painting of "Pallas and
+the Centaur," now on the walls of the Pitti, one of Sandro's most
+consummate pieces of decorative work.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl3-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE III.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF A MAN.  (From the panel in the Florence Academy)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+This portrait of a young man holding a medal of Cosimo dei Medici is
+interestingly related to the only other undisputed separate portrait of
+Sandro's, that in the National Gallery.  It is supposed to represent
+Giovanni, younger son of Cosimo, who died in 1461: if this be correct
+the portrait cannot have been painted by Botticelli for several years
+after its subject's death.  There is little convincing evidence on the
+matter.  The panel measures 21 by 14 inches.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl3.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl3-t.jpg" alt="PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF A MAN." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE III.&mdash;PORTRAIT OF A MAN.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+The enumeration of these commissions shows that the artist had become
+closely associated with the Medici.  Lorenzo's palace and country
+villas were at this time the centre of the most brilliant group of
+scholars, philosophers, poets, and artists in the world.  In this
+atmosphere Botticelli's genius came to flower.  He appears, moreover,
+to have enjoyed the friendship of Leonardo da Vinci, a man eight years
+his junior, who had been studying in Verocchio's workshop, hard by that
+of the Pollajuoli.  His was a spirit yet more subtle than Sandro's
+own&mdash;subtle even with the subtlety of the serpent&mdash;and the two men must
+have understood one another intimately.  Botticelli himself was a
+pleasant, even a jovial man, but a man of moods.  Like Leonardo he
+never married.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.  Thither they repaired with their assistants
+and other artists, probably remaining there during the greater part of
+the next three years.  Sandro is believed to have had some general
+oversight or arrangement of the whole work, while he himself
+contributed certain portraits of Popes, and three great frescoes
+occupying nearly a thousand square feet of the chapel walls.  During
+his prolonged stay in Rome he must also have painted some easel
+pictures; one, an "Adoration of the Magi," is now in St Petersburg.
+This Roman interlude in his Florentine life, marked by direct rivalry
+and daily contact with artists of genius different from his own, is in
+every respect central in his story.  He was now in his maturity, a man
+approaching forty years of age, working on a conspicuous task, in that
+Eternal City to which the greatest sons of Florence were ever the
+foremost to offer spiritual homage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it may be doubted whether the task itself was calculated to evoke
+his highest powers and most characteristic qualities.  Neither in its
+subjects, its scale, nor the conditions under which it was
+accomplished, was it well suited to Sandro's genius, and while the
+frescoes contain noble passages and inimitable illustrations of his
+art, they cannot be regarded as among his masterpieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The frescoes were completed and the chapel opened in August 1483.
+Vasari tells how great renown, above that of all his fellows, in the
+work, Sandro gained in Rome, and what large sums he received and
+squandered there.  Before settling again in his own city, he worked
+with Ghirlandajo upon the decorations of the Medici Villa at Volterra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From 1480 to 1490 he was probably regarded as the greatest of living
+masters in Florence, and was busy with many commissions.  To this
+period belong several of his greatest works, probably the "Birth of
+Venus," greatest of them all, with the Madonnas of the Pomegranate and
+of St. Barnabas, certainly the Lemmi frescoes and the Bardi Madonna.
+Venus and the frescoes are in the perfect manner which characterises
+his classical subjects.  The others are marked by some decline in
+technical handling.  But in saying this, one must add that Sandro's
+work is, in all periods, amazingly unequal, alike in execution and
+conception.  One almost wishes indeed that Vasari's dictum, that he
+worked "when he was minded," was even more true than it appears to be.
+For Sandro's subtle, wilful, whimsical genius hardly ever expressed its
+true nature in mere rivalry with other artists, or in the service of
+ecclesiastical patrons.  Yet his undisputed works are too few, hardly
+fifty in all, for us really to wish any away.  Even the panels of the
+St. Barnabas predella, and the tondo of the Ambrosiana Madonna can
+hardly be spared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We come now to the later and stormier years of his life and work&mdash;years
+dominated for him and for Florence by the figure of the Dominican Prior
+of San Marco.  Savonarola had already been for a time in the city, but
+it was not till 1490 that he made it his home, and began to fill it, as
+he was soon to fill the whole world, with his prophetic denunciations
+of corruption both in the Republic and in the Church.  1492 saw not
+only the death of Lorenzo, and with him of the golden age in Florence,
+but the enthronement of a Borgia as Father of the Church.  It was the
+end of an epoch.  For a few years the prior held the city by the power
+and fascination of his inspired personality.  He welcomed Charles VIII.
+of France as a new Cyrus, the sword of the Lord, restorer and protector
+of the liberties of the Republic; and when the king and his army became
+a public menace, it was he who bade them on their way.  In 1496 he was
+at grips with the Pope.  But two years later he had lost his hold upon
+Florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the
+populace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than Pico della Mirandola, the
+beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these
+troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the
+lion-hearted preacher.  His own brother Simone, with whom he lived, was
+one of the Prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause.  There
+can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by
+Savonarola.  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.  In 1503 Botticelli was
+one of the artists consulted as to the position which should be
+allotted to the great sculptor's "David."  He still shared some small
+property with his brother, but his principal patrons were dead, the
+times were out of joint, and he was seeking consolation in the study of
+Dante.  A folio volume of drawings by his hand, illustrating the Divine
+Comedy, remains uncompleted; whether owing to the death of him for whom
+it was intended, or of the artist himself, we cannot tell.  Sandro died
+on May 17, 1510, and was buried in All Saints.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl4-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE IV.&mdash;THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION
+OF THE VIRGIN.  (From the tondo in the Uffizi)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+Probably painted about 1479, this is the most perfect example of
+Botticelli's circular pictures.  The lines of the composition have been
+compared with those of the corolla of an open rose.  The colour is rich
+and harmonious, and every detail exquisitely finished.  The Virgin is
+still writing her song of the Magnificat, while the Child handles a
+symbolic pomegranate.  The tondo is 44 inches in diameter.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl4.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl4-t.jpg" alt="PLATE IV.--THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE IV.&mdash;THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+II
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Botticelli was a Florentine in as intimate a sense as was Dante
+himself, and nowhere but in his native city can his work be fully
+appreciated.  It is true that notable examples of his art have been
+carried away from time to time to other places, and that pictures
+attributed to him are still more widely scattered.  New York has one of
+his most beautiful early works, the Madonna formerly belonging to
+Prince Chigi, for whose sale to America the unpatriotic Prince was
+heavily fined; St. Petersburg has an "Adoration of the Magi" belonging
+to Sandro's years in Rome.  The "St. Sebastian" painted for Lorenzo has
+found its way to Berlin, where there is besides the Bardi Madonna; the
+badly damaged frescoes celebrating the wedding of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
+are at the head of a staircase in the Louvre; Rome has the Sixtine
+frescoes; Milan has two Madonnas; Bergamo has a panel; while our own
+National Gallery has five works, ranging from the earliest to the
+latest period.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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:[<a id="chap02fn1text"></a><a href="#chap02fn1">1</a>] 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.  It is in the pale cool colours of early morning, enriched by the
+heavy red of the robe which is about to embrace the wanderer's lovely
+form.  There is a great sense of space behind her, over the grey sea.
+All about her the wind blows, making the light very clean and clear.
+She stands upon the edge of the great gleaming shell which has carried
+her, tilting it down with her weight as she leans forward to step
+ashore.  Her figure, tall, slender, and quite central in the picture,
+feels the wind and light about it, but not shrinkingly.  It floats and
+moves, yet without consciousness of movement, as it were a somnambulist
+moving across the sea.  The pearly luminous quality of this living
+ethereal body, the heavy golden tresses of the long hair that hangs
+heavily against the wind, which with one hand she holds, while she lays
+the other dreamily on her breast, these are in the most perfect harmony
+with that flower-like immortal wistfulness which Sandro has put into
+her face.  In striking contrast with this sea-born vision of Love, this
+strange visitant from an unknown world, stands the comparatively
+prosaic maiden who welcomes her and is about to wrap her in a rich
+mantle.  This earth maiden, the representative of the Spring, in her
+pale gown sprigged with cornflowers, and her long plaits of dark hair,
+is garlanded, like the goddess in "Pallas and the Centaur," with olive
+branches.  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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl5-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE V.&mdash;THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.  (From the tondo in the
+Uffizi)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+A companion to the earlier tondo, this was probably not painted before
+Sandro's return from Rome, about the same time as the "Venus."  It is
+broader in treatment and of more sombre colour than the "Magnificat."
+The eyes of the Child, who raises his hand in blessing, look straight
+out of the picture, in marked contrast to the attitude of the earlier
+work.  There is a striking resemblance in many details, but the two
+pictures are quite distinct in character and feeling.  This tondo
+measures 56 inches.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl5.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl5-t.jpg" alt="PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE V.&mdash;THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+Any attempt to convey by description the mystical significance of this
+decorative design would obviously be idle.  Yet to miss that
+significance is to miss all.  Regarded as the mere illustration of some
+verse of Politian's, or of Homer's hymn, the picture is open to endless
+criticism&mdash;the figure of Venus is out of drawing; the promontories,
+waves, and laurel trees are bare shorthand notes.  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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the same room hangs a smaller picture, very different in style, an
+"Adoration of the Kings"&mdash;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.  It contains portraits of the Medicis
+and, more important to us, of the painter himself.[<a id="chap02fn2text"></a><a href="#chap02fn2">2</a>]  Detached from
+the others he stands in the right-hand corner, under the peacock,
+wrapped in an orange mantle, gazing at us over his shoulder&mdash;a tall
+figure of a man with powerful enigmatic face.  The composition of this
+picture, with its thirty figures and varied colouring, has been often
+and rightly praised.  In spite of the clear individualisation of
+personalities and the elaboration of magnificent accessories, the unity
+and balance of design with its semi-circular grouping and the nobility
+and distinction of its lines, are well kept.  If it was painted in
+rivalry with Ghirlandajo, for whose work it was at one time mistaken,
+it is marked by an intensity of realisation foreign to that worthy
+painter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These two pictures of the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, the "Venus" and the
+"Adoration," are representative of the two realms in which Sandro
+worked; the one, of pure imagination, wedding Platonic ideas with a new
+conception of the possibilities of decorative art; the other, of the
+patrons and atmosphere of fifteenth-century Florence.  Very few of his
+pictures belong exclusively to the one realm or the other, but to one
+or other belongs the influence which predominates in any one.  Of the
+first class are notably the remaining works painted with classical
+motives.  Foremost among these is the "Spring" of the Florence Academy,
+with its inimitable group of the Graces dancing in a marvellous rhythm
+of flowing intertwining lines, somewhat over-mannered, it is true, and
+with feeling a little forced, but yet of quite unique grace and
+intensity of conception.  Much wordy debate over the literary
+signification of this painting has come between the vital meaning of
+the design and those who behold it.  We may find suggestions in Lucian
+or Alberti, in Politian's or Lorenzo's verses, but as a work of art it
+derives only secondarily from any of these.  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.  This picture, in which
+the figures are nearly life size, while it has much in common with the
+"Venus," belongs to an earlier period, and is probably nearer in date
+to the "Adoration" already described, painted when the artist was about
+thirty-four years old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some two years later he painted his "Pallas and the Centaur."  The
+figure of the goddess, beautiful as it is, lacks something of the
+vitality and motion of the "Spring" and the "Venus"; perhaps the artist
+has given too much thought to the lovely wreathing of the symbolic
+olive boughs about her breast and arms and head; but on the other hand,
+the melancholy Centaur whom she leads by his heavy forelock is one of
+the most perfect expressions of his art.  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; she is wreathed with olive, her auburn hair blows
+out behind her, and her feet are covered with a sort of orange buskin.
+Nothing could be finer than the contrast she presents with the dark,
+wild, pathetic figure of "Chaos and Old Night" whom she is leading
+captive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most beautiful of Sandro's earlier works, a little panel only 10
+inches by 8, representing the return of Judith to Bethulia after the
+slaying of Holofernes, is in the Uffizi.  It has suffered from
+repainting, the figure of Judith having been shortened and its movement
+limited by the drawing back of the right foot at least half an inch, so
+that it does not now correspond with that of Abra following so close
+behind with her horrid burden; but in spite of this, it retains a
+wonderful joyous serenity of light, line, and colour, and the same
+windy clearness of air and buoyant rhythmical movement as distinguishes
+the "Venus."  The figure of Judith is so closely related to that of the
+Fortezza, painted for the Pollajuoli in 1470, and exhibited in the same
+gallery, that it may well belong to the years immediately succeeding
+it, when Sandro was between twenty-six and thirty years of age.  The
+companion panel of Holofernes, though interesting, is much inferior as
+a design and is somewhat comic in its frank and ghastly violence; it
+was evidently painted while the artist was under the influence of the
+Pollajuoli.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl6-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE VI.&mdash;THE ANNUNCIATION.  (From the panel in the Uffizi)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+This interesting picture is probably only in part the work of
+Botticelli.  It seems to have been produced in his workshop about 1490
+for the monks of Cestello.  It is less harmonious and convincing in
+colour than Sandro's masterpieces, but is redeemed by the living
+movement expressed in the figure of Gabriel, which is usually regarded
+as his work.  This figure is related to two others of his angels, one
+in the Ambrosiana tondo, the other in the predella of the "Coronation."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl6.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl6-t.jpg" alt="PLATE VI.--THE ANNUNCIATION." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE VI.&mdash;THE ANNUNCIATION.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+There are two other masterpieces which belong to this division of
+Sandro's work, but they are neither of them in Florence.  The
+beautiful, but sadly mutilated fresco of Giovanna (Albizzi) Tornabuoni,
+with Venus and the Graces, long hidden under coats of whitewash in a
+villa near Fiesole, was discovered in 1873 by Dr. Lemmi, then its
+owner, and carefully cleaned and removed.  In 1882 it was acquired by
+the French government.  In spite of the blank patches, and the great
+cracks which break its surface, this remains one of the most gracious
+and captivating of Sandro's works.  It has the joyousness of
+flower-like colour, the breadth and simplicity of treatment, and withal
+the virginal quality which, in his best moments, were characteristic of
+the artist.  The masterly contrast between the flowing moving lines and
+strange symbolic faces of the four visitors, and the upright demure
+girl with the kerchief on her head who receives them is very striking.
+The second fresco, of Giovanna's husband, Lorenzo, introduced into the
+company of the Liberal Arts and Philosophy, is less interesting.  A
+third fell to pieces immediately after discovery.  All were painted
+about the year 1486, probably a little later than the "Venus."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remaining picture of this group is the so-called "Mars and Venus"
+in our own National Gallery, a long panel designed to stand above a
+doorway, and probably painted about the same time as the more famous
+"Spring."  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.  The little satyrs with
+their roguish baby faces, curly goats' flanks, and budding horns, who
+play with the warrior's lance and helm, blow the conch in his ear, and
+wriggle through his breastplate, seem to have been suggested by a
+passage in Lucian describing the marriage of Alexander.  But the
+subject of the picture need not now detain us, nor need the long
+outstretched figure of the dreaming warrior; its charm is in the
+exquisitely realised youthful grace of the lady in her long white robe,
+leaning upon a crimson cushion with the dark grove of laurels behind
+her.  She is of the same spiritual family as the Graces, and the
+central figure of Venus in the "Spring."  She may indeed be Simonetta,
+perhaps Simonetta already deceased, of whom her lover dreams; but,
+whatever her name, her face and figure, and from her the whole picture,
+is radiant with that singleness and intensity of artistic conception,
+which gives to some of Sandro's pictures the power of suggesting a sort
+of immortality of life.  And they have a surcharge of meaning, an
+enigmatic quality like that of life itself, which is seen in no other
+pictures of the time with the exception of Leonardo's&mdash;and in Sandro's
+the enigma suggests no sinister solution.  His women are creations of
+passionate love and human intimacy, but withal they have an abiding
+quality which only a very reverent and chaste lover, a lover not unlike
+Pico della Mirandola, could have adored and chosen.  The date of this
+picture is quite uncertain.  The lady's face is curiously related to
+the faces in the Lemmi fresco described above.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a id="chap02fn1"></a>
+[<a href="#chap02fn1text">1</a>] Though his contemporaries were beginning to use the new medium of
+oil for their easel paintings, Botticelli adhered to <i>tempera</i>, or
+distemper, in which yolk of egg was generally the vehicle employed.
+Nearly all his pictures, except, of course, his frescoes, are upon
+wood.  The "Pallas and the Centaur," "Venus," and "Nativity" of 1500,
+are however on prepared canvas.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a id="chap02fn2"></a>
+[<a href="#chap02fn2text">2</a>] There are two separate portraits by Sandro which are full of
+character and interest: the portrait of a youth in our National
+Gallery, and of a man holding a medal in the Florence Academy.  Other
+portraits, such as those of Giuliano dei Medici at Berlin and Bergamo,
+and of Simonetta, may have come from his workshop, but are not now
+numbered among the master's own works.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+III
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+We must turn to the principal pictures in Botticelli's other, and as I
+think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which
+exist between the two groups.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first of these is the "Calumny," painted to the description given
+in Alberti's Treatise on Painting of a picture by Apelles.  It is a
+comparatively small panel, 2 feet by 3, containing ten figures, and an
+elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered
+with friezes and bas-reliefs.  It belongs to Sandro's later years, and
+is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence.  One can hardly
+look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of Innocence, with
+crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the
+ladylike Calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive.
+Their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of Truth, standing on
+the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven.
+She is intimately related to the figure of Venus Anadyomene&mdash;but here
+she seems tragically out of place.  The fancy lavished upon the
+bas-reliefs bears witness to Sandro's whimsical imagination even in the
+midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when Florence was full of
+the false spirit suggested in this panel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the "Calumny" I must mention, though only in passing, the several
+panels of the life of Saint Zenobius, two of which are in the
+collection of Mrs. Ludwig Mond.  Less theatrical, but often more
+violent in manner than the "Calumny," and not less definitely of the
+genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour,
+geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white.  These,
+with the illustrative panels from the stories of Virginia and Lucretia,
+were probably painted after 1490, for wedding chests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A more important group of pictures comprises the six&mdash;including the
+"Adoration" already described&mdash;which centre in the three figures of the
+Holy Family, whether they be called Adorations or Nativities; and the
+Sixtine frescoes.  All these pictures are full of figures, most of them
+are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge
+Leonardo's assertion that Botticelli was indifferent to this part of
+his art.  The two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid
+"Adoration"&mdash;the "Adoration" now in St. Petersburg, and the "Scenes
+from the Life of Moses" in the Sixtine Chapel, were painted about the
+same time in Rome.  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.  This St.
+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."
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl7-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE VII.&mdash;THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL.  (From the
+panel in the National Gallery)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+This beautiful painting is no longer ascribed to Botticelli; but it is
+obviously an indirect, if not a direct, product of his genius.  The
+Virgin is distinct in type from those of the master, and the painting
+of the Child is dissimilar.  The name of Giuliano da San Gallo, one of
+Sandro's friends, and a famous Florentine architect, is written across
+the back of the picture.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl7.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl7-t.jpg" alt="PLATE VII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE VII.&mdash;THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+But in this marvellous central scene of a large fresco, the very sheep
+are so intensely realised as to have an individuality over and above
+their mere sheepiness.  By the well, under the great oak tree of the
+Papal (Rovere) family, Moses is pouring water into the troughs for
+Zipporah and her sister.  His long luxuriant hair falls about a
+sensitive face.  Behind and below him are the sheep, so woolly that you
+can in fancy pass your hand over their fleeces.  On the opposite side
+of the well are the two Midianitish maidens, standing out, the bright
+central motive of the whole design; one with her back turned and hands
+extended, the other walking in a sort of dream, her head drooping
+forward under the long thick locks of its heavy hair.  A skin full of
+fruit is slung round her waist, and a distaff is in her hand.  About
+this group, whose lines follow those of the well-mouth, the painter has
+contrived to introduce half-a-dozen other incidents from Moses' life.
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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; and through his
+power of realisation, this little terrier, a mere accessory in the
+foreground of a great fresco filled with details, has a life of its
+own.  Thus, at its best, his work is not representation at all, nor
+mere illustration; it is the re-creation in a new medium of the
+creatures and ideas he has conceived, even to their least
+characteristics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two other Sixtine frescoes represent the "Punishment of Korah,"
+painted in celebration of the revolt and suicide of the Archbishop of
+Krain; and that known either as the "Leper's Offering," or the
+"Temptation of Christ," which was also intended to flatter the
+sensibilities of the Pope.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap04"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+IV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+We now come to the second great division of Sandro's pictures, his
+Madonnas and Saints, tondos, panels, and altar-pieces, painted for
+different patrons at intervals during his lifetime.  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 "; between her and the group of
+angels on the left is a distant landscape with curving river; behind
+her shoulder, supporting on one side the celestial crown, which is so
+much too large to rest upon her head, is a beautiful young angel of a
+distinctive type which hardly recurs in Sandro's work.  This
+composition, with its intricately curved, and unobtrusively harmonious
+lines, so perfectly adapted to the circular form, has often been
+praised.  In the later tondo, the Madonna with the Pomegranate, there
+is no distant scene, but the sense of infinite vista is conveyed by the
+far-away, pensive expression, not only of the central figure with her
+slender drooping shoulders, but, as I think, of the Child himself.  The
+grouping is simple, but less perfect than in the earlier work; and
+there is a lack of harmony between the secular little beings with their
+wings, flowers, and singing books, and the rapt Mother and Child, which
+we did not feel in the other, where Madonna herself, guided by the
+Babe, is writing her song of praise.  But here Botticelli has
+concentrated the religious feeling of the picture in Mary's face, and
+in it he has struck again the mystical note which vibrates through the
+whole of his "Venus."  Much has been said of the misery of this
+Madonna; for myself, I see in her face far more of the rapt vision of
+one who sees immortal things in a mystery.  She is not glad because of
+them, but her whole thought and being is separated by them from the
+things that change, being set upon the things that endure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these two tondos, I must mention for beauty and unity of
+conception the "Chigi" Madonna and that in the Poldo-Pezzoli Gallery at
+Milan.  The former is generally regarded as among his earlier works.
+An open casement shows a river winding among wooded hills, a church
+steeple having been painted in as an afterthought.  Mary's attitude, as
+she fingers the ears of corn thrust among the grapes in the bowl
+presented by a mysterious garlanded angel, is not unlike that of the
+"Magnificat," to which the whole composition is related.  But Mary
+herself is of a very different type, more nearly related to the Madonna
+at Milan of which I shall now speak.  She, also, is seated by a window,
+and like her sister of the "Magnificat" she is reading in a missal with
+decipherable words.  As in that picture too, the Child looks up at her
+with his hand on hers, a crown of thorns circling his chubby wrist.
+The colour is rich and harmonious; Mary being magnificently coiffed and
+clad.  Another Madonna in Milan, that in the Ambrosiana Gallery, bears
+some resemblance both to the Virgin just described, and to her of the
+"Magnificat."  As in the Poldo-Pezzoli Madonna, the glories are either
+repainted or unusually elaborate, and Mary has a star embroidered on
+her left shoulder.  Here again is the open missal, but now quite
+undecipherable, resting upon a cushion.  It is possible to conceive of
+the Babe being another version of that in the Poldo-Pezzoli picture.
+But this Ambrosiana Madonna with her unimaginative face and
+uncompromising attitude, this grotesquely sentimental Child, these
+three spiritless attitudinising angels prancing about on their errands,
+is perhaps the least pleasing or characteristic of all the works now
+attributed to the master.  The picture is conventional to a degree; a
+great canopy hangs in space over the Virgin, between its curtains are
+seen the hills, towers, and river of a distant scene.[<a id="chap04fn1text"></a><a href="#chap04fn1">1</a>]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A somewhat similar canopy overhangs the Virgin in the Madonna of St.
+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 God," is very nobly 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.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="img-pl8-t"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+PLATE VIII.&mdash;THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY AN OPEN WINDOW.  (From the panel
+in the National Gallery)
+</p>
+
+<p class="caption">
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a href="images/img-pl8.jpg">
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-pl8-t.jpg" alt="PLATE VIII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY AN OPEN WINDOW." />
+</a>
+<br />
+PLATE VIII.&mdash;THE VIRGIN AND CHILD BY AN OPEN WINDOW.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;like
+Titian's "Assumption"&mdash;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."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 naïvely explanatory, it is filled with intense
+feeling, and suggests the influence upon Sandro of the Prate's
+favourite master, Fra Angelico.[<a id="chap04fn2text"></a><a href="#chap04fn2">2</a>]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is generally believed to be the last of his paintings, but it seems
+probable that the drawings to illustrate 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 Eunoë, 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 Japanese quality.  Very different in
+suggestion is that of the Chained Giants (Inferno XXXI.) 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.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a id="chap04fn1"></a>
+[<a href="#chap04fn1text">1</a>] 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.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a id="chap04fn2"></a>
+[<a href="#chap04fn2text">2</a>] 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 basement 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.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap05"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+V
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+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 God 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.  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 mediæval world had passed
+already away, and the hearts of men were turning to the pure worship of
+living incarnate loveliness&mdash;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
+passionate desire for freedom and for beauty, out of which they came.
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &amp; Co.
+<br />
+Edinburgh &amp; London
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap06"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  IN THE SAME SERIES
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+          ARTIST.          EDITOR.
+
+          VELAZQUEZ.       S. L. BENSUSAN.
+          REYNOLDS.        S. L. BENSUSAN.
+          TURNER.          LEWIS HIND.
+          ROMKEY.          LEWIS HIND.
+          GREUZE.          ALICE EYRE MACKLIN.
+          BOTTICELLI.      HENRY B. BINNS.
+          ROSSETTI.        LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+          BELLINI.         GEORGE HAY.
+          FRA ANGELICO.    JAMES MASON.
+          LEIGHTON.        A. LYS BALDRY.
+          REMBRANDT.       JOSEF ISRAELS.
+          WATTS.           W. L. HARE.
+          TITIAN.          S. L. BENSUSAN.
+          RAPHAEL.         PAUL G. KONODY.
+</pre>
+
+<p class="t4">
+<i>Others in Preparation</i>
+</p>
+
+<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Botticelli
+
+Author: Henry Bryan Binns
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2012 [EBook #39942]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOTTICELLI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
+
+EDITED BY T. LEMAN HARE
+
+
+
+
+
+BOTTICELLI
+
+
+
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS.  From the tempera on canvas in the
+Uffizi.  (Frontispiece)
+
+This picture is generally regarded as the supreme achievement of
+Botticelli's genius.  It was probably painted about 1485, after his
+return from Rome.  The canvas measures 5 ft 8 in. by 9 ft 1 in., so
+that the figures are nearly life size.  No reproduction can do justice
+to the exquisite delicacy of expression in the original.  Something of
+the same quality will be found in the "Mars and Venus" in the National
+Gallery, which was probably painted about the same time.  The two
+figures on the left are usually described as Zephyrus and Zephyritis,
+representing the south and south-west winds: that on the right may be
+one of the Hours of Homer's Hymn, or possibly the Spring.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+
+
+
+BOTTICELLI
+
+
+
+BY HENRY BRYAN BINNS
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
+  REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
+
+
+
+[Illustration: title page logo]
+
+
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+
+NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+The plates are printed by BEMROSE DALZIEL, LTD., Watford
+
+The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Plate
+
+    I. The Birth of Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+           From the tempera on canvas in the Uffizi
+
+
+   II. Spring
+           From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy
+
+
+  III. Portrait of a Man
+           From the panel in the Florence Academy
+
+
+   IV. The Madonna of the Magnificat, known also as the Coronation
+         of the Virgin
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+    V. The Madonna of the Pomegranate
+           From the tondo in the Uffizi
+
+
+   VI. The Annunciation
+           From the panel in the Uffizi
+
+
+  VII. The Virgin and Child with St. John and an Angel
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+
+
+ VIII. The Virgin and Child by an Open Window
+           From the panel in the National Gallery
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Botticelli]
+
+
+From Florence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, men looked
+into a new dawn.  When the Turk took Constantinople in 1443, the "glory
+that was Greece" was carried to her by fleeing scholars, and she became
+for one brilliant generation the home of that Platonic worship of
+beauty and philosophy which had been so long an exile from the hearts
+of men.  I say Platonic, because it was especially to Plato, the
+mystic, that she turned, possessed still by something of the mystical
+intensity of her own great poet, himself an exile.  When, in 1444, Pope
+Eugenius left her to return to Rome, Florence was ready to welcome this
+new wanderer, the spirit of the ancient world.  And the almost childish
+wonder with which she received that august guest is evident in all the
+marvellous work of the years that followed, in none more than in that
+of Sandro Botticelli.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE II.--SPRING.  (From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy)
+
+The date of this painting is much debated.  It may probably be about
+1478, before the Roman visit.  It is somewhat larger than the "Venus,"
+but the figures are of similar size.  Reading from the left they are
+usually described as Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Primavera the
+Spring-maiden, Flora, and Zephyrus.  The robed Venus is in striking
+contrast with that of the later picture.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--SPRING.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+He indeed was born in the very year of that new advent, lived through
+the period of its sunshine into one of storms--Stygian darkness and
+frightful flashes of light--and went down at last, an old broken man,
+staggering between two crutches, to his grave.  His times were those of
+Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was a few years his junior, the
+unacknowledged despot of the Tuscan Republic, a prince, cold and hard
+as steel, worthy to be an example for young Macchiavelli, yet none the
+less a poet, and a devoted lover both of philosophy and of all
+beautiful things.
+
+It was an age when a new synthesis was being made, and old enemies
+reconciled, so that men were less ready then to blame than to admire,
+and the best feeling of the time was that of reverent wonder.  It is
+this which, more than any other painter, Botticelli has expressed for
+us.  His pictures are living witnesses to the reverence which, in his
+day, the mystery of human life evoked in spirits such as his.
+
+But while this is true, and true in the first degree of Sandro and his
+work, they express besides other moods, and betray other influences.
+The later quatrocento was the time not only of Lorenzo and the
+Platonists, but of Savonarola also, the last great figure of the Middle
+Ages, strangely proclaiming the new days; and with him, of foreign
+incursions into Italy and Florence, of violence and all the black-brood
+of religious and civil strife.  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 sometimes, and increasingly, a poignant questioning of
+the sibyls.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The life of the painter appears to have been uneventful, and all that
+is known of him can be told in little space.  His father was a
+Florentine tanner, and his elder brother followed the same trade, and
+was nicknamed Botticello, "little barrel."  The family patronymic was
+dei Filipepi, but the painter signed himself "Sandro di Mariano," the
+latter being his father's name.  Sandro (Alexander) was, perhaps, the
+son of a second marriage, for he was young enough to have been the
+child of his brother Giovanni, the tanner, whose nickname became
+affixed to him.  He was probably born in 1444, in a house close to All
+Saints (Ognissanti) Cemetery in the present Via della Porcellana.  His
+father was now in middle life, and a prosperous man.  The lad was
+delicate, quick and wilful, perhaps a spoilt child.  He was older than
+usual when he went at about fifteen into a goldsmith's shop, doubtless
+that of Antonio his second brother.  But he was not long contented
+there.  A year or two later he was studying painting under that famous
+friar, Fra Lippo Lippi.  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.  How long he remained with his master is uncertain,
+but it is probable that the fruitful relationship continued until after
+he came of age.  Perhaps he was twenty-four when he returned to
+Florence, and became associated with the brothers Pollajuolo, for whom,
+in 1470, he executed the first commission of which we have record.  But
+as he was now twenty-six, this cannot be his earliest work.  There is a
+hillside shrine near Settignano, which contains a Madonna--Madonna
+della Vannella--formerly ascribed to the friar, but which is now
+believed to be one of the earliest efforts of his pupil.  And in the
+National Gallery the long panel of the "Adoration" officially ascribed
+to "Filippino Lippi" has by general consent been transferred to Sandro,
+and assigned to the period before his association with the Pollajuoli.
+
+Here it should be said that none of Botticelli's paintings is clearly
+signed and dated; and even indirect documentary proofs are wanting in
+the case of the majority of his works.  Much has therefore to be
+decided by the doubtful and highly technical tests of internal
+evidence.  These are rendered more difficult by the receptivity of this
+artist, who came late to maturity and was throughout his life
+profoundly affected by external influence; but on the other hand, his
+work has certain mannerisms as well as excellences special to it, which
+even his imitators and students failed to reproduce.
+
+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; and the scientific studies of anatomy and
+perspective in which he was now encouraged, increased his power of
+expression without distracting it from its proper purpose.
+
+In 1469 Fra Filippo died, and three years later his son Filippino, then
+fourteen years old, became Sandro's pupil.  From this it would appear
+that by 1472, when he was twenty-eight years of age, Botticelli had
+left the Pollajuoli, and had a workshop, or bottega, of his own, in the
+family house where the income-tax returns of 1480 describe him as still
+working.  Here in 1473 Lorenzo the Magnificent, who four years earlier
+had become master of Florence, commissioned him to paint a St.
+Sebastian; and from this time forward the Medici gave him frequent
+proofs of their appreciation.  In the following year he went to Pisa,
+where he had some prospect of a large commission.  This, however, fell
+through; he failed, Vasari tells us, to satisfy himself in his trial
+picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, a subject not well suited to
+his mind.  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;
+but most of all we note the changed theme, first among those classical
+subjects which the artist was in a special sense to make his own.
+Botticelli painted portraits both of Giuliano dei Medici and his adored
+lady, Simonetta, the beautiful young wife of Marco Vespucci; and,
+though these are lost, it is generally believed that Simonetta's lovely
+and innocent charm of face and character inspired many of his happiest
+fancies.  She died in 1476, and two years later, Giuliano was
+assassinated during Mass in the Duomo.  Sandro was employed by his
+brother--who himself had narrowly escaped death on the same
+occasion--to commemorate the assassins' shame by painting their
+portraits on the face of the Palazzo Publico.  A task more suited to
+his temper was the celebration of Lorenzo's diplomatic success, when in
+1479 he succeeded in detaching the King of Naples from a hostile
+alliance against Florence.  This occasioned the painting of "Pallas and
+the Centaur," now on the walls of the Pitti, one of Sandro's most
+consummate pieces of decorative work.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF A MAN.  (From the panel in the Florence Academy)
+
+This portrait of a young man holding a medal of Cosimo dei Medici is
+interestingly related to the only other undisputed separate portrait of
+Sandro's, that in the National Gallery.  It is supposed to represent
+Giovanni, younger son of Cosimo, who died in 1461: if this be correct
+the portrait cannot have been painted by Botticelli for several years
+after its subject's death.  There is little convincing evidence on the
+matter.  The panel measures 21 by 14 inches.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--PORTRAIT OF A MAN.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+The enumeration of these commissions shows that the artist had become
+closely associated with the Medici.  Lorenzo's palace and country
+villas were at this time the centre of the most brilliant group of
+scholars, philosophers, poets, and artists in the world.  In this
+atmosphere Botticelli's genius came to flower.  He appears, moreover,
+to have enjoyed the friendship of Leonardo da Vinci, a man eight years
+his junior, who had been studying in Verocchio's workshop, hard by that
+of the Pollajuoli.  His was a spirit yet more subtle than Sandro's
+own--subtle even with the subtlety of the serpent--and the two men must
+have understood one another intimately.  Botticelli himself was a
+pleasant, even a jovial man, but a man of moods.  Like Leonardo he
+never married.
+
+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.  Thither they repaired with their assistants
+and other artists, probably remaining there during the greater part of
+the next three years.  Sandro is believed to have had some general
+oversight or arrangement of the whole work, while he himself
+contributed certain portraits of Popes, and three great frescoes
+occupying nearly a thousand square feet of the chapel walls.  During
+his prolonged stay in Rome he must also have painted some easel
+pictures; one, an "Adoration of the Magi," is now in St Petersburg.
+This Roman interlude in his Florentine life, marked by direct rivalry
+and daily contact with artists of genius different from his own, is in
+every respect central in his story.  He was now in his maturity, a man
+approaching forty years of age, working on a conspicuous task, in that
+Eternal City to which the greatest sons of Florence were ever the
+foremost to offer spiritual homage.
+
+But it may be doubted whether the task itself was calculated to evoke
+his highest powers and most characteristic qualities.  Neither in its
+subjects, its scale, nor the conditions under which it was
+accomplished, was it well suited to Sandro's genius, and while the
+frescoes contain noble passages and inimitable illustrations of his
+art, they cannot be regarded as among his masterpieces.
+
+The frescoes were completed and the chapel opened in August 1483.
+Vasari tells how great renown, above that of all his fellows, in the
+work, Sandro gained in Rome, and what large sums he received and
+squandered there.  Before settling again in his own city, he worked
+with Ghirlandajo upon the decorations of the Medici Villa at Volterra.
+
+From 1480 to 1490 he was probably regarded as the greatest of living
+masters in Florence, and was busy with many commissions.  To this
+period belong several of his greatest works, probably the "Birth of
+Venus," greatest of them all, with the Madonnas of the Pomegranate and
+of St. Barnabas, certainly the Lemmi frescoes and the Bardi Madonna.
+Venus and the frescoes are in the perfect manner which characterises
+his classical subjects.  The others are marked by some decline in
+technical handling.  But in saying this, one must add that Sandro's
+work is, in all periods, amazingly unequal, alike in execution and
+conception.  One almost wishes indeed that Vasari's dictum, that he
+worked "when he was minded," was even more true than it appears to be.
+For Sandro's subtle, wilful, whimsical genius hardly ever expressed its
+true nature in mere rivalry with other artists, or in the service of
+ecclesiastical patrons.  Yet his undisputed works are too few, hardly
+fifty in all, for us really to wish any away.  Even the panels of the
+St. Barnabas predella, and the tondo of the Ambrosiana Madonna can
+hardly be spared.
+
+We come now to the later and stormier years of his life and work--years
+dominated for him and for Florence by the figure of the Dominican Prior
+of San Marco.  Savonarola had already been for a time in the city, but
+it was not till 1490 that he made it his home, and began to fill it, as
+he was soon to fill the whole world, with his prophetic denunciations
+of corruption both in the Republic and in the Church.  1492 saw not
+only the death of Lorenzo, and with him of the golden age in Florence,
+but the enthronement of a Borgia as Father of the Church.  It was the
+end of an epoch.  For a few years the prior held the city by the power
+and fascination of his inspired personality.  He welcomed Charles VIII.
+of France as a new Cyrus, the sword of the Lord, restorer and protector
+of the liberties of the Republic; and when the king and his army became
+a public menace, it was he who bade them on their way.  In 1496 he was
+at grips with the Pope.  But two years later he had lost his hold upon
+Florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the
+populace.
+
+Sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than Pico della Mirandola, the
+beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these
+troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the
+lion-hearted preacher.  His own brother Simone, with whom he lived, was
+one of the Prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause.  There
+can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by
+Savonarola.  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.  In 1503 Botticelli was
+one of the artists consulted as to the position which should be
+allotted to the great sculptor's "David."  He still shared some small
+property with his brother, but his principal patrons were dead, the
+times were out of joint, and he was seeking consolation in the study of
+Dante.  A folio volume of drawings by his hand, illustrating the Divine
+Comedy, remains uncompleted; whether owing to the death of him for whom
+it was intended, or of the artist himself, we cannot tell.  Sandro died
+on May 17, 1510, and was buried in All Saints.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE IV.--THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS THE CORONATION
+OF THE VIRGIN.  (From the tondo in the Uffizi)
+
+Probably painted about 1479, this is the most perfect example of
+Botticelli's circular pictures.  The lines of the composition have been
+compared with those of the corolla of an open rose.  The colour is rich
+and harmonious, and every detail exquisitely finished.  The Virgin is
+still writing her song of the Magnificat, while the Child handles a
+symbolic pomegranate.  The tondo is 44 inches in diameter.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT, KNOWN ALSO AS
+THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Botticelli was a Florentine in as intimate a sense as was Dante
+himself, and nowhere but in his native city can his work be fully
+appreciated.  It is true that notable examples of his art have been
+carried away from time to time to other places, and that pictures
+attributed to him are still more widely scattered.  New York has one of
+his most beautiful early works, the Madonna formerly belonging to
+Prince Chigi, for whose sale to America the unpatriotic Prince was
+heavily fined; St. Petersburg has an "Adoration of the Magi" belonging
+to Sandro's years in Rome.  The "St. Sebastian" painted for Lorenzo has
+found its way to Berlin, where there is besides the Bardi Madonna; the
+badly damaged frescoes celebrating the wedding of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
+are at the head of a staircase in the Louvre; Rome has the Sixtine
+frescoes; Milan has two Madonnas; Bergamo has a panel; while our own
+National Gallery has five works, ranging from the earliest to the
+latest period.
+
+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.  It is in the pale cool colours of early morning, enriched by the
+heavy red of the robe which is about to embrace the wanderer's lovely
+form.  There is a great sense of space behind her, over the grey sea.
+All about her the wind blows, making the light very clean and clear.
+She stands upon the edge of the great gleaming shell which has carried
+her, tilting it down with her weight as she leans forward to step
+ashore.  Her figure, tall, slender, and quite central in the picture,
+feels the wind and light about it, but not shrinkingly.  It floats and
+moves, yet without consciousness of movement, as it were a somnambulist
+moving across the sea.  The pearly luminous quality of this living
+ethereal body, the heavy golden tresses of the long hair that hangs
+heavily against the wind, which with one hand she holds, while she lays
+the other dreamily on her breast, these are in the most perfect harmony
+with that flower-like immortal wistfulness which Sandro has put into
+her face.  In striking contrast with this sea-born vision of Love, this
+strange visitant from an unknown world, stands the comparatively
+prosaic maiden who welcomes her and is about to wrap her in a rich
+mantle.  This earth maiden, the representative of the Spring, in her
+pale gown sprigged with cornflowers, and her long plaits of dark hair,
+is garlanded, like the goddess in "Pallas and the Centaur," with olive
+branches.  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.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.  (From the tondo in the
+Uffizi)
+
+A companion to the earlier tondo, this was probably not painted before
+Sandro's return from Rome, about the same time as the "Venus."  It is
+broader in treatment and of more sombre colour than the "Magnificat."
+The eyes of the Child, who raises his hand in blessing, look straight
+out of the picture, in marked contrast to the attitude of the earlier
+work.  There is a striking resemblance in many details, but the two
+pictures are quite distinct in character and feeling.  This tondo
+measures 56 inches.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+Any attempt to convey by description the mystical significance of this
+decorative design would obviously be idle.  Yet to miss that
+significance is to miss all.  Regarded as the mere illustration of some
+verse of Politian's, or of Homer's hymn, the picture is open to endless
+criticism--the figure of Venus is out of drawing; the promontories,
+waves, and laurel trees are bare shorthand notes.  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.  It contains portraits of the Medicis
+and, more important to us, of the painter himself.[2]  Detached from
+the others he stands in the right-hand corner, under the peacock,
+wrapped in an orange mantle, gazing at us over his shoulder--a tall
+figure of a man with powerful enigmatic face.  The composition of this
+picture, with its thirty figures and varied colouring, has been often
+and rightly praised.  In spite of the clear individualisation of
+personalities and the elaboration of magnificent accessories, the unity
+and balance of design with its semi-circular grouping and the nobility
+and distinction of its lines, are well kept.  If it was painted in
+rivalry with Ghirlandajo, for whose work it was at one time mistaken,
+it is marked by an intensity of realisation foreign to that worthy
+painter.
+
+These two pictures of the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, the "Venus" and the
+"Adoration," are representative of the two realms in which Sandro
+worked; the one, of pure imagination, wedding Platonic ideas with a new
+conception of the possibilities of decorative art; the other, of the
+patrons and atmosphere of fifteenth-century Florence.  Very few of his
+pictures belong exclusively to the one realm or the other, but to one
+or other belongs the influence which predominates in any one.  Of the
+first class are notably the remaining works painted with classical
+motives.  Foremost among these is the "Spring" of the Florence Academy,
+with its inimitable group of the Graces dancing in a marvellous rhythm
+of flowing intertwining lines, somewhat over-mannered, it is true, and
+with feeling a little forced, but yet of quite unique grace and
+intensity of conception.  Much wordy debate over the literary
+signification of this painting has come between the vital meaning of
+the design and those who behold it.  We may find suggestions in Lucian
+or Alberti, in Politian's or Lorenzo's verses, but as a work of art it
+derives only secondarily from any of these.  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.  This picture, in which
+the figures are nearly life size, while it has much in common with the
+"Venus," belongs to an earlier period, and is probably nearer in date
+to the "Adoration" already described, painted when the artist was about
+thirty-four years old.
+
+Some two years later he painted his "Pallas and the Centaur."  The
+figure of the goddess, beautiful as it is, lacks something of the
+vitality and motion of the "Spring" and the "Venus"; perhaps the artist
+has given too much thought to the lovely wreathing of the symbolic
+olive boughs about her breast and arms and head; but on the other hand,
+the melancholy Centaur whom she leads by his heavy forelock is one of
+the most perfect expressions of his art.  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; she is wreathed with olive, her auburn hair blows
+out behind her, and her feet are covered with a sort of orange buskin.
+Nothing could be finer than the contrast she presents with the dark,
+wild, pathetic figure of "Chaos and Old Night" whom she is leading
+captive.
+
+The most beautiful of Sandro's earlier works, a little panel only 10
+inches by 8, representing the return of Judith to Bethulia after the
+slaying of Holofernes, is in the Uffizi.  It has suffered from
+repainting, the figure of Judith having been shortened and its movement
+limited by the drawing back of the right foot at least half an inch, so
+that it does not now correspond with that of Abra following so close
+behind with her horrid burden; but in spite of this, it retains a
+wonderful joyous serenity of light, line, and colour, and the same
+windy clearness of air and buoyant rhythmical movement as distinguishes
+the "Venus."  The figure of Judith is so closely related to that of the
+Fortezza, painted for the Pollajuoli in 1470, and exhibited in the same
+gallery, that it may well belong to the years immediately succeeding
+it, when Sandro was between twenty-six and thirty years of age.  The
+companion panel of Holofernes, though interesting, is much inferior as
+a design and is somewhat comic in its frank and ghastly violence; it
+was evidently painted while the artist was under the influence of the
+Pollajuoli.
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE VI.--THE ANNUNCIATION.  (From the panel in the Uffizi)
+
+This interesting picture is probably only in part the work of
+Botticelli.  It seems to have been produced in his workshop about 1490
+for the monks of Cestello.  It is less harmonious and convincing in
+colour than Sandro's masterpieces, but is redeemed by the living
+movement expressed in the figure of Gabriel, which is usually regarded
+as his work.  This figure is related to two others of his angels, one
+in the Ambrosiana tondo, the other in the predella of the "Coronation."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE ANNUNCIATION.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+There are two other masterpieces which belong to this division of
+Sandro's work, but they are neither of them in Florence.  The
+beautiful, but sadly mutilated fresco of Giovanna (Albizzi) Tornabuoni,
+with Venus and the Graces, long hidden under coats of whitewash in a
+villa near Fiesole, was discovered in 1873 by Dr. Lemmi, then its
+owner, and carefully cleaned and removed.  In 1882 it was acquired by
+the French government.  In spite of the blank patches, and the great
+cracks which break its surface, this remains one of the most gracious
+and captivating of Sandro's works.  It has the joyousness of
+flower-like colour, the breadth and simplicity of treatment, and withal
+the virginal quality which, in his best moments, were characteristic of
+the artist.  The masterly contrast between the flowing moving lines and
+strange symbolic faces of the four visitors, and the upright demure
+girl with the kerchief on her head who receives them is very striking.
+The second fresco, of Giovanna's husband, Lorenzo, introduced into the
+company of the Liberal Arts and Philosophy, is less interesting.  A
+third fell to pieces immediately after discovery.  All were painted
+about the year 1486, probably a little later than the "Venus."
+
+The remaining picture of this group is the so-called "Mars and Venus"
+in our own National Gallery, a long panel designed to stand above a
+doorway, and probably painted about the same time as the more famous
+"Spring."  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.  The little satyrs with
+their roguish baby faces, curly goats' flanks, and budding horns, who
+play with the warrior's lance and helm, blow the conch in his ear, and
+wriggle through his breastplate, seem to have been suggested by a
+passage in Lucian describing the marriage of Alexander.  But the
+subject of the picture need not now detain us, nor need the long
+outstretched figure of the dreaming warrior; its charm is in the
+exquisitely realised youthful grace of the lady in her long white robe,
+leaning upon a crimson cushion with the dark grove of laurels behind
+her.  She is of the same spiritual family as the Graces, and the
+central figure of Venus in the "Spring."  She may indeed be Simonetta,
+perhaps Simonetta already deceased, of whom her lover dreams; but,
+whatever her name, her face and figure, and from her the whole picture,
+is radiant with that singleness and intensity of artistic conception,
+which gives to some of Sandro's pictures the power of suggesting a sort
+of immortality of life.  And they have a surcharge of meaning, an
+enigmatic quality like that of life itself, which is seen in no other
+pictures of the time with the exception of Leonardo's--and in Sandro's
+the enigma suggests no sinister solution.  His women are creations of
+passionate love and human intimacy, but withal they have an abiding
+quality which only a very reverent and chaste lover, a lover not unlike
+Pico della Mirandola, could have adored and chosen.  The date of this
+picture is quite uncertain.  The lady's face is curiously related to
+the faces in the Lemmi fresco described above.
+
+
+[1] Though his contemporaries were beginning to use the new medium of
+oil for their easel paintings, Botticelli adhered to _tempera_, or
+distemper, in which yolk of egg was generally the vehicle employed.
+Nearly all his pictures, except, of course, his frescoes, are upon
+wood.  The "Pallas and the Centaur," "Venus," and "Nativity" of 1500,
+are however on prepared canvas.
+
+[2] There are two separate portraits by Sandro which are full of
+character and interest: the portrait of a youth in our National
+Gallery, and of a man holding a medal in the Florence Academy.  Other
+portraits, such as those of Giuliano dei Medici at Berlin and Bergamo,
+and of Simonetta, may have come from his workshop, but are not now
+numbered among the master's own works.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+We must turn to the principal pictures in Botticelli's other, and as I
+think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which
+exist between the two groups.
+
+The first of these is the "Calumny," painted to the description given
+in Alberti's Treatise on Painting of a picture by Apelles.  It is a
+comparatively small panel, 2 feet by 3, containing ten figures, and an
+elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered
+with friezes and bas-reliefs.  It belongs to Sandro's later years, and
+is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence.  One can hardly
+look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of Innocence, with
+crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the
+ladylike Calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive.
+Their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of Truth, standing on
+the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven.
+She is intimately related to the figure of Venus Anadyomene--but here
+she seems tragically out of place.  The fancy lavished upon the
+bas-reliefs bears witness to Sandro's whimsical imagination even in the
+midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when Florence was full of
+the false spirit suggested in this panel.
+
+With the "Calumny" I must mention, though only in passing, the several
+panels of the life of Saint Zenobius, two of which are in the
+collection of Mrs. Ludwig Mond.  Less theatrical, but often more
+violent in manner than the "Calumny," and not less definitely of the
+genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour,
+geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white.  These,
+with the illustrative panels from the stories of Virginia and Lucretia,
+were probably painted after 1490, for wedding chests.
+
+A more important group of pictures comprises the six--including the
+"Adoration" already described--which centre in the three figures of the
+Holy Family, whether they be called Adorations or Nativities; and the
+Sixtine frescoes.  All these pictures are full of figures, most of them
+are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge
+Leonardo's assertion that Botticelli was indifferent to this part of
+his art.  The two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid
+"Adoration"--the "Adoration" now in St. Petersburg, and the "Scenes
+from the Life of Moses" in the Sixtine Chapel, were painted about the
+same time in Rome.  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.  This St.
+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."
+
+=====================================================================
+
+PLATE VII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL.  (From the
+panel in the National Gallery)
+
+This beautiful painting is no longer ascribed to Botticelli; but it is
+obviously an indirect, if not a direct, product of his genius.  The
+Virgin is distinct in type from those of the master, and the painting
+of the Child is dissimilar.  The name of Giuliano da San Gallo, one of
+Sandro's friends, and a famous Florentine architect, is written across
+the back of the picture.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN
+ANGEL.]
+
+=====================================================================
+
+But in this marvellous central scene of a large fresco, the very sheep
+are so intensely realised as to have an individuality over and above
+their mere sheepiness.  By the well, under the great oak tree of the
+Papal (Rovere) family, Moses is pouring water into the troughs for
+Zipporah and her sister.  His long luxuriant hair falls about a
+sensitive face.  Behind and below him are the sheep, so woolly that you
+can in fancy pass your hand over their fleeces.  On the opposite side
+of the well are the two Midianitish maidens, standing out, the bright
+central motive of the whole design; one with her back turned and hands
+extended, the other walking in a sort of dream, her head drooping
+forward under the long thick locks of its heavy hair.  A skin full of
+fruit is slung round her waist, and a distaff is in her hand.  About
+this group, whose lines follow those of the well-mouth, the painter has
+contrived to introduce half-a-dozen other incidents from Moses' life.
+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; and through his
+power of realisation, this little terrier, a mere accessory in the
+foreground of a great fresco filled with details, has a life of its
+own.  Thus, at its best, his work is not representation at all, nor
+mere illustration; it is the re-creation in a new medium of the
+creatures and ideas he has conceived, even to their least
+characteristics.
+
+The two other Sixtine frescoes represent the "Punishment of Korah,"
+painted in celebration of the revolt and suicide of the Archbishop of
+Krain; and that known either as the "Leper's Offering," or the
+"Temptation of Christ," which was also intended to flatter the
+sensibilities of the Pope.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+We now come to the second great division of Sandro's pictures, his
+Madonnas and Saints, tondos, panels, and altar-pieces, painted for
+different patrons at intervals during his lifetime.  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 "; between her and the group of
+angels on the left is a distant landscape with curving river; behind
+her shoulder, supporting on one side the celestial crown, which is so
+much too large to rest upon her head, is a beautiful young angel of a
+distinctive type which hardly recurs in Sandro's work.  This
+composition, with its intricately curved, and unobtrusively harmonious
+lines, so perfectly adapted to the circular form, has often been
+praised.  In the later tondo, the Madonna with the Pomegranate, there
+is no distant scene, but the sense of infinite vista is conveyed by the
+far-away, pensive expression, not only of the central figure with her
+slender drooping shoulders, but, as I think, of the Child himself.  The
+grouping is simple, but less perfect than in the earlier work; and
+there is a lack of harmony between the secular little beings with their
+wings, flowers, and singing books, and the rapt Mother and Child, which
+we did not feel in the other, where Madonna herself, guided by the
+Babe, is writing her song of praise.  But here Botticelli has
+concentrated the religious feeling of the picture in Mary's face, and
+in it he has struck again the mystical note which vibrates through the
+whole of his "Venus."  Much has been said of the misery of this
+Madonna; for myself, I see in her face far more of the rapt vision of
+one who sees immortal things in a mystery.  She is not glad because of
+them, but her whole thought and being is separated by them from the
+things that change, being set upon the things that endure.
+
+With these two tondos, I must mention for beauty and unity of
+conception the "Chigi" Madonna and that in the Poldo-Pezzoli Gallery at
+Milan.  The former is generally regarded as among his earlier works.
+An open casement shows a river winding among wooded hills, a church
+steeple having been painted in as an afterthought.  Mary's attitude, as
+she fingers the ears of corn thrust among the grapes in the bowl
+presented by a mysterious garlanded angel, is not unlike that of the
+"Magnificat," to which the whole composition is related.  But Mary
+herself is of a very different type, more nearly related to the Madonna
+at Milan of which I shall now speak.  She, also, is seated by a window,
+and like her sister of the "Magnificat" she is reading in a missal with
+decipherable words.  As in that picture too, the Child looks up at her
+with his hand on hers, a crown of thorns circling his chubby wrist.
+The colour is rich and harmonious; Mary being magnificently coiffed and
+clad.  Another Madonna in Milan, that in the Ambrosiana Gallery, bears
+some resemblance both to the Virgin just described, and to her of the
+"Magnificat."  As in the Poldo-Pezzoli Madonna, the glories are either
+repainted or unusually elaborate, and Mary has a star embroidered on
+her left shoulder.  Here again is the open missal, but now quite
+undecipherable, resting upon a cushion.  It is possible to conceive of
+the Babe being another version of that in the Poldo-Pezzoli picture.
+But this Ambrosiana Madonna with her unimaginative face and
+uncompromising attitude, this grotesquely sentimental Child, these
+three spiritless attitudinising angels prancing about on their errands,
+is perhaps the least pleasing or characteristic of all the works now
+attributed to the master.  The picture is conventional to a degree; a
+great canopy hangs in space over the Virgin, between its curtains are
+seen the hills, towers, and river of a distant scene.[1]
+
+A somewhat similar canopy overhangs the Virgin in the Madonna of St.
+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 God," is very nobly 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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
+Titian's "Assumption"--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 naively 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 illustrate 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 Japanese quality.  Very different in
+suggestion is that of the Chained Giants (Inferno XXXI.) 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 basement 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 God 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 Shelley.  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 passed
+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
+passionate desire for freedom and for beauty, out of which they came.
+
+
+
+
+Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.
+
+Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+
+  IN THE SAME SERIES
+
+  ARTIST.          EDITOR.
+
+  VELAZQUEZ.       S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  REYNOLDS.        S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  TURNER.          LEWIS HIND.
+  ROMKEY.          LEWIS HIND.
+  GREUZE.          ALICE EYRE MACKLIN.
+  BOTTICELLI.      HENRY B. BINNS.
+  ROSSETTI.        LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+  BELLINI.         GEORGE HAY.
+  FRA ANGELICO.    JAMES MASON.
+  LEIGHTON.        A. LYS BALDRY.
+  REMBRANDT.       JOSEF ISRAELS.
+  WATTS.           W. L. HARE.
+  TITIAN.          S. L. BENSUSAN.
+  RAPHAEL.         PAUL G. KONODY.
+
+  _Others in Preparation_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Botticelli, by Henry Bryan Binns
+
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