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(b Florence, 1444-5; d Florence, 17 May 1510). Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d'Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli's reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the 'modern manner', in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s (see
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| Biography: Sandro Botticelli |
The Italian painter Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510) was one of the major Renaissance artists in Florence, which was the center for innovative painting in fifteenth-century Europe.
Sandro Botticelli was born several generations after Donatello, Masaccio, and their associates gave Florentine art its essential direction and just before it took a great turn in the High Renaissance work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and others. Botticelli worked in an established, almost traditional manner at a point just before the mode was generally perceived as no longer adequate.
Vagaries of Botticelli Criticism
A certain critical tradition has looked on Botticelli as a "decadent" artist, connected with the culture embodied in Lorenzo the Magnificent, de facto ruler of the city, poet, philosopher, and sophisticate. Successful in the 1470s and 1480s, then out of fashion and forgotten at the time of his death, Botticelli was greatly acclaimed in the 19th century, especially in England by the Pre-Raphaelites, who found that he legitimized their style, which combined the sensuous and the immaterial. Of late, scholars have considered this to be a misreading of Botticelli and have stressed his Florentine concern for solidly modeled form and religious exposition. Concurrently, however, admiration for his work has declined. Recent study has also tended to reject, as without contemporary support, the picture of him as first a member of Lorenzo's intellectual circle and later a devotee of the religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola.
Early Style
Son of a tanner, trained by a master whose name is not known, Botticelli followed in his first works the current version of the Florentine style, the prime practitioner of which was Andrea del Verrocchio. This style was not much concerned with the convincing rendition of space and emphasized the human figure, with dense modeling, sharp contour, and linear rhythm. Botticelli's major early works are Fortitude (1470, one of seven Virtues for a merchants' assembly hall; the other six are by Piero Pollaiuolo), two tiny panels of the story of Judith and Holofernes, and St. Sebastian (1474). In some of these he altered the appearance of muscular energy and physical action found in Verrocchio's work in the direction of nervous fatigue and contemplative repose.
These qualities are most evident in Botticelli's best-known works, Spring and the Birth of Venus, executed for a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for his villa. They obviously reflect the contemporary literary culture, but their precise subject matter has been much debated and has never been agreed on; they were certainly designed in consultation with a scholar, but he may have invented an allegory for the occasion which was not recorded. Since Venus has a central position in both works, it is plausible to consider the two figures of Venus as a contrasting pair. There was a literary convention in philosophical-archeological writing of the time of contrasting the spiritual and the earthly Venus, which may well be a factor in the paintings, though not the entire theme.
Botticelli continued using this early style after 1480 (the Birth is perhaps as late as 1485), but meantime a new style emerged in frescoes such as St. Augustine (1480) in the Church of the Ognissanti, Florence; the Annunciation (1481) for S. Martino, Florence; and three frescoes (1481-1482) in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, executed during Botticelli's only trip away from Florence. These frescoes show a new concern with the construction of stagelike spaces and stiffer figures, also seen in a series of altarpieces of 1485 and 1489. A bow to the newly fashionable work of Domenico Ghirlandaio and of Flemish painting is implied, but the tense linearity of the figure reveals that Botticelli's art had not undergone any fundamental changes.
Mature Style
After 1490 Botticelli began to concentrate on paintings with many small figures, using the same cutting contour lines, so that the entire picture surface acquired a trembling vibrancy. Many works exhibited this new tendency, such as the Calumny of Apelles, a visualization of a description of a painting by an ancient Roman writer; the Crucifixion, with a rain of arrows descending on a view of Florence in the background, the only work by Botticelli definitely expounding Savonarola's view of the sinning city; the Last Communion of St. Jerome, the most intense of several works portraying physical collapse of the body; and the Nativity, (1501), which employed an archaic design of Fra Angelico, with a stylized cave suggesting pre-Renaissance landscapes, and an inscription referring to current prophecies of the end of the world.
In his late years Botticelli was crippled and failed to receive commissions, but he may have continued to work on his set of drawings (never finished) illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy, remarkable for their consistent evocation of an energized irrational space. By about 1504, when the young Raphael came to Florence to observe the new modes of Leonardo and Michelangelo, Botticelli's art must have seemed obsolete, although it had been widely imitated in the 1490s.
Further Reading
Herbert P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi, Commonly Called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence (1908), is a classic of biographical reconstruction. Lionello Venturi, Botticelli (1937), provides critical analysis. Botticelli is placed in the context of contemporary intellectual movements in Giulio Argan, Botticelli: Biographical and Critical Study (trans. 1957). Roberto Salvini, All the Paintings of Botticelli (trans., 4 vols., 1965), is up to date and reliable.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Sandro Botticelli |
Bibliography
See studies by H. P. Horne (1908), L. Venturi (1949, repr. 1961), G. C. Argan (tr. by J. Emmons, 1957), and L. D. and H. Ettlinger (1985).
| Fine Arts Dictionary: Botticelli, Sandro |
An Italian painter of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. His best-known work is The Birth of Venus.
| Wikipedia: Sandro Botticelli |
| Sandro Botticelli | |
 Alleged self-portrait of Botticelli, in his Adoration of the Magi. Uffizi, Florence. |
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| Birth name | Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi |
| Born | c. 1445[1] Florence, Italy |
| Died | May 17, 1510 Florence, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Field | Painting |
| Training | Filippo Lippi Andrea del Verrocchio |
| Movement | Early Renaissance |
| Works | Primavera The Birth of Venus The Adoration of the Magi |
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello ("The Little Barrel"; c. 1445[1] – May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting, and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art.
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Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know that he became an apprentice when he was about fourteen years old, which would indicate that he received a fuller education than did other Renaissance artists. Vasari reported that he was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother Antonio.[2] Probably by 1462 he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi;[3] many of his early works have been attributed to the elder master, and attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate and detailed manner. As recently discovered, during this time, Botticelli could have traveled to Hungary, participating in the creation of a fresco in Esztergom, ordered in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by Vitéz János, then archbishop of Hungary.
By 1470 Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this early date his work was characterized by a conception of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled forms.
The masterworks Primavera (c. 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) were both seen by Vasari at the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello in the mid-16th century, and until recently, it was assumed that both works were painted specifically for the villa. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise: the Primavera was painted for Lorenzo's townhouse in Florence, and The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different site. By 1499, both had been installed at Castello.[4]
In these works, the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli's study of the antique. But if the painterly means may be understood, the subjects themselves remain fascinating for their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these paintings continue to receive widespread scholarly attention, mainly focusing on the poetry and philosophy of humanists who were the artist's contemporaries. The works do not illustrate particular texts; rather, each relies upon several texts for its significance. Of their beauty, characterized by Vasari as exemplifying "grace" and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt.
The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475-1476, now at the Uffizi) contains the portraits of Cosimo de' Medici ("the finest of all that are now extant for its life and vigour"),[5] his grandson Giuliano de' Medici, and Cosimo's son Giovanni. The quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of Botticelli's pinnacles.
In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine and Umbrian artists to fresco the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The iconological program was the supremacy of the Papacy. Sandro's contribution was moderately successful. He returned to Florence, and "being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante and illustrated the Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstention from work led to serious disorders in his living." Thus Vasari characterized the first printed Dante (1481) with Botticelli's decorations; he could not imagine that the new art of printing might occupy an artist.
In the mid-1480s Botticelli worked on a major fresco cycle with Perugino, Ghirlandaio, and Filippino Lippi, for Lorenzo the Magnificent's villa near Volterra; in addition he painted many frescoes in Florentine churches.
In 1491 Botticelli served on a committee to decide upon a facade for the Florence Duomo. In 1502 he was accused of sodomy, though charges were later dropped. In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where Michelangelo's David would be placed. His later work, especially as seen in a series on the life of St. Zenobius, witnessed a diminution of scale, expressively distorted figures, and a non-naturalistic use of colour reminiscent of the work of Fra Angelico nearly a century earlier.
In later life, Botticelli was one of Savonarola's followers, though the full extent of Savonarola's influence is uncertain.[6] The story that he burnt his own paintings on pagan themes in the notorious "Bonfire of the Vanities" is not told by Vasari, who asserts that of the sect of Savonarola "he was so ardent a partisan that he was thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to live on, fell into very great distress. For this reason, persisting in his attachement to that party, and becoming a Piagnone[7] he abandoned his work.". Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinman searched for the artist's psychological development through his Madonnas. In the "deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Mary's physiognomy", Steinman discerns proof of Savonarola's influence over Botticelli. This means that the biographer needed to alter the dates of a number of Madonnas to substantiate his theory; specifically, they are dated ten years later than before. Steinman disagrees with Vasari's assertion that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola. Steinman believes the spiritual and emotional Virgins rendered by Sandro follow directly from the teachings of the Dominican monk.
Earlier, Botticelli had painted an Assumption of the Virgin for Matteo Palmieri in a chapel at San Pietro Maggiore in which, it was rumored, both the patron who dictated the iconic scheme and the painter who painted it, were guilty of unidentified heresy, a delicate requirement in such a subject. The heretical notions seem to be gnostic in character:
By the side door of San Piero Maggiore he did a panel for Matteo Palmieri, with a large number of figures representing the Assumption of Our Lady with zones of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the orders of angels, the whole from a design given to him by Matteo, who was a worthy and educated man. He executed this work with the greatest mastery and diligence, introducing the portraits of Matteo and his wife on their knees. But although the great beauty of this work could find no other fault with it, said that Matteo and Sandro were guilty of grave heresy. Whether this be true or not, I cannot say. (Giorgio Vasari)
This is a common misconception based on an error by Vasari. The painting referred to here, now in the National Gallery in London, is by the artist Botticini. Vasari confused their similar sounding names.
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Botticelli never wed, and expressed a strong aversion to the idea of marriage, a prospect he claimed gave him nightmares.[8] The popular view is that he suffered from unrequited love for Simonetta Vespucci, a married noblewoman. She had served as the model for The Birth of Venus and recurs throughout his paintings, despite the fact that she had died years earlier, in 1476. Botticelli asked that when he die he be buried at her feet in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence. His wish was carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510.
Some modern historians have also examined other aspects of his sexuality. In 1938, Jacques Mesnil discovered a summary of a charge in the Florentine Archives for 16 November 16 1502 which read simply, "Botticelli keeps a boy". The painter would then have been fifty-eight. Mesnil dismissed it as a customary slander by which partisans and adversaries of Savonarola abused each other. Opinion remains divided on whether this is evidence of homosexuality[9]. Many have firmly backed Mesnil,[10], but others have cautioned against hasty dismissal of the charge[11]. Yet while speculating on the subject of his paintings, Mesnil nevertheless concluded "woman was not the only object of his love".[12]
Botticelli was already little employed in 1502; after his death his reputation was eclipsed longer and more thoroughly than that of any other major European artist. His paintings remained in the churches and villas[13] for which they had been created, his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel upstaged by Michelangelo's. The first nineteenth century art historian to have looked with satisfaction at Botticelli's Sistine frescoes was Alexis-François Rio. Through Rio, Anna Brownell Jameson and Charles Eastlake were alerted to Botticelli, but, while works by his hand began to appear in German collections, both the Nazarene movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ignored him. Walter Pater created a literary picture of Botticelli, who was then taken up by the Aesthetic movement. The first monograph on the artist was published in 1893; then, between 1900 and 1920 more books were written on Botticelli than any other painter.[14]
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| Fine Arts Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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