Botticelli's position in the coffin painting. Late paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Caravaggio. Position in the coffin. 1602-1604 Pinacoteca Vatican
Before us is the body of Christ and 5 figures. His body is held from the side of the head by Saint John. The youngest disciple of Christ. Nicodemus holds him from the side of his legs. Resident of Judea, secret disciple of Christ.
In a dark blue robe - Saint Mary. She raised her hand to her son's face. Saying goodbye to him forever. Mary Magdalene wipes her face from tears. And the farthest figure is Maria Kleopova. Most likely, she is a relative of Christ.
The figures stand very closely. They are like one monolith. Protruding from the darkness.
Of course it's a masterpiece. But what makes this picture so outstanding?
As we can see, the composition is interesting. But not original. The master used an already existing formula. Christ was depicted in approximately the same position at the beginning of the 16th century. And the mannerists* half a century before Caravaggio (1571-1610)
3. Realistic people
Caravaggio depicted Saint Mary at about 55 years old. It seems that she looks older than her years due to the grief that befell her. Take a closer look at her face. This is not an old woman, as she is often described in this picture. This is a woman over 50, heartbroken.
Her age is realistic. This is exactly what a woman whose son is 33 years old could look like.
The fact is that before Caravaggio, Saint Mary was depicted as young. Thus, idealizing her image as much as possible.
Annibale Carracci. Pieta. 1600 Capodimonte Museum, Naples, Italy For example, Carracci, the founder of the first art academy, followed the same trend. His Saint Mary and Christ in the Pietà painting are approximately the same age.
4. Feeling of dynamics
Caravaggio depicts a moment when the men are under great stress. St. John has a hard time holding his body. It's not easy for him. He awkwardly touched the wound on Christ's chest with his fingers.
Nicodemus is also at the limit of his strength. The veins in his legs were bulging. It is clear that he is holding his burden with all his strength.
It is as if we see them slowly lowering the body of Christ. Such unusual dynamics make the picture even more realistic.
Caravaggio. Position in the coffin. Fragment. 1603-1605 Pinacoteca Vatican 5. The famous tenebroso Caravaggio
Caravaggio uses the tenebroso technique. There is pitch darkness in the background. And the figures seem to be outlined by a dim light directed at them.
Many contemporaries criticized Caravaggio for this manner. They called it “basement”. But it is precisely this technique that is one of the most characteristic features of Caravaggio’s work. He was able to maximize all its advantages.
The figures acquire extraordinary relief. The emotions of the characters become extremely expressed. The composition is even more complete.
This style became very popular thanks to Caravaggio. Among his followers one can single out the Spanish artist Zurbaran.
Look at his famous painting “Lamb of God”. It is the shadowbroso that creates the illusion of reality. The lamb lies in front of us as if alive. Lit by dim light.
Francisco de Zurbaran. Lamb of God. 1635-1640 Prado Museum, Madrid Caravaggio was a reformer of painting. He is the founder of realism. And “Entombment” is one of his greatest creations.
It was copied by the greatest masters. Which also confirms its value for world art. One of the most famous copies belongs to Rubens.
Peter Paul Rubens. Position in the coffin. 1612-1614 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa “Entombment” is a very sad plot. But it was precisely these subjects that Caravaggio took on most often.
I think this is due to childhood psychological trauma. At age 6, he watched his father and grandfather die in agony from the bubonic plague. After which his mother went crazy with grief. From childhood he learned that life is full of suffering.
But this did not stop him from becoming the greatest artist. True, he lived only 39 years. He died. His body disappeared without a trace. Presumably his remains were found only 400 years later! In 2010. Read about this in the article
* mannerists - artists working in the style of mannerism (100-year era between the Renaissance and Baroque, 16th century). Characteristic features: oversaturation of the composition with details, elongated, often twisted bodies, allegorical subjects, increased eroticism. Prominent representatives:
The story about the work of the famous Florentine Quattrocento artist (15th century Renaissance art) Sandro Botticelli can be endless. However, you need to put an end to your story at some point. And I will try to do that in this final post.
The end of the century was marked for Florence by the fiery, revolutionary sermons of Fra Girolamo Savonarola . And while “vanity” (precious utensils, luxurious clothes and works of art based on themes from pagan mythology) was burned in the city squares, the hearts of the Florentines were inflamed and a revolution flared up, more spiritual than social, striking first of all those very sensitive, sophisticated minds that were creators of the elitist intellectualism of Lorenzo's time.
A revaluation of values, a decline in interest in speculative illusory constructions, a sincere need for renewal, a desire to again find strong, true moral and spiritual foundations were signs of deep internal discord experienced by many Florentines (including Botticelli) already in the last years of the Magnificent’s life and which reached its apogee November 9, 1494 - the feast of the Savior and day of expulsion of the Medici .
Botticelli, who lived under the same roof with his brother Simone, a convinced “pianoni” (literally “crybaby” - that’s what Savonarola’s followers were called), was strongly influenced by Fra Girolamo , which could not but leave a deep mark on his painting. This is eloquently evidenced by two altar images of the “Lamentation of Christ” from the Munich Alte Pinakothek and the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. The paintings date from around 1495 and were located in the churches of San Paolino and Santa Maria Maggiore respectively.
Lamentation of Christ, 1495, Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum
Christian drama Botticelli experiences, first of all, human grief, as endless grief for an innocent victim who has gone through the way of the cross, suffering and shameful execution.The power of experience captures each of the characters and unites them into a pathetic whole. The content is conveyed in the language of line and color, which by this time had undergone a sharp change in the master’s work.
The accusatory speeches of Fra Girolamo Savonarola did not leave Botticelli indifferent; religious themes became prevalent in his art . In 1489-1490 he wrote " Annunciation"for the Cistercian monks (now in the Uffizi Gallery).
In 1495, the artist completed the last of his works for the Medici, painting several works at the villa in Trebbio for a side branch of this family, later called "dei Popolani".
In 1501, the artist created "Mystical Christmas". For the first time, he signed his painting and dated it.
In this painting, Botticelli depicts a vision where the image of the world appears without boundaries, where there is no organization of space by perspective, where the heavenly is mixed with the earthly. Christ was born in a wretched hut. Mary, Joseph and the pilgrims who came to the place of the miracle bowed before Him in awe and amazement.
Angels with olive branches in their hands lead a round dance in the sky, glorify the mystical birth of the Baby and, descending to earth, worship Him.
The artist interprets this sacred scene as a religious mystery, presenting it in “common” language. In his wonderful "Christmas" Sandro Botticelli expressed his desire for renewal and universal happiness. He deliberately primitivizes forms and lines, complements intense and variegated colors with an abundance of gold.
At the heart of Botticell's drama, a deeply personal drama that left its stamp on all of his art, is the polarity of two worlds. On the one hand, this is the humanistic culture that has developed around the Medici with its knightly and pagan motives; on the other hand, the reformist and ascetic spirit of Savonarola, for whom Christianity determined not only his personal ethics, but also the principles of civil and political life, so that the activities of this “Christ, King of Florence” (the inscription that Savonarola’s adherents wanted to make above the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria) acted as the complete opposite of the magnificent and tyrannical rule of the Medici.
The desire for greater depth and drama is clearly evident in Botticelli's mature works of this period. One of them is "Abandoned". Sometimes another name for this painting is found - “Allegory of Virtue”.
"Abandoned", 1490, Rome, Rospigliosi Collection
The plot of the picture is undoubtedly taken from the Bible: Tamar, driven out by Amnon (http://www.bottichelli.infoall.info/txt/3pokinut.shtml). But this single historical fact in its artistic embodiment acquires an eternal and universal sound: here is a feeling of a woman’s weakness, and compassion for her loneliness and suppressed despair, and a blank barrier in the form of a closed gate and a thick wall, reminiscent of the walls of a medieval castle. A man crushed by hopelessness in this soulless, lifeless environment is undoubtedly a spiritual self-portrait of Botticelli himself.
« Slander" - Botticelli's last painting on a secular theme. One may be surprised that such a small picture (62x91) contains so much meaning and talent. The painting was not intended for the wall, but to be kept and viewed close up, like a jewel.
Libel, circa 1490, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The image recalls a lost painting by Apelles, a famous artist in antiquity, described by the poet Lucianus. Lucian reports that the painter Antiphilos, out of envy of his more talented colleague Apelles, accused him of being involved in a conspiracy against the Egyptian king Ptolemy IV, at the court where both artists were located.
The innocent Apelles was thrown into prison, but one of the real conspirators declared his innocence. King Ptolemy rehabilitated the painter and gave him Antiphilos as a slave. Apelles, still filled with horror at the injustice, painted the above picture. Botticelli completed the plot according to the description.
The king sits on a throne in a hall decorated with sculptures (on the right in the picture). Nearby are allegorical figures Ignorance, Suspicion and Meanness, who eagerly whisper rumors into the donkey ears (symbol of stupidity) of the king. His eyes are lowered, he does not see anything around, his hand is extended to the Anger standing in front of him.
Anger dressed in black, looks intently at the king, extending his left hand towards him. With its right hand, Anger pulls Slander forward. Slander with his left hand he holds a torch, the fire of untruth that burns the truth. With her right hand she pulls her victim's hair, naked young man - Innocence. Innocence with its nakedness shows that it is not hiding anything, but in vain, Innocence begs to be sorted out.
Envy and Fraud stand behind Slander, weaving white ribbons into her hair and showering her with roses. Outwardly beautiful, women insidiously use symbols of purity to decorate Slander.
Repentance, an old woman in black, stands aside. With bitterness she looks at The truth, standing on the left, wanting to help Innocence.
Truth, resembling a statue of the classical goddess of perfect beauty, points upward to the One on whom the final judgment about truth and lies depends. "Naked" Truth and Repentance distant from the king and the others, who pay no attention to them. The truth has nothing to hide, while others hide their intentions with black or colored, bright clothes.
James Hall, author of the classic Dictionary of Plots and Symbols in Art, points out that in Botticelli's painting " The last two figures of Repentance and Truth came, it seems, too late to save Innocence».
The most heartbreaking, emotional picture of the late period of Botticelli’s work is “Entombment”. It is characterized by angularity and some woodiness of the figures. The body of the dead Christ with his heavily fallen hand anticipates some of Caravaggio's images, and the head of the unconscious Mary brings to mind images of Bernini.
Entombment, 1495-1500, Munich, Alte Pinikothek
In this work, Botticelli rises to tragic heights, achieving extraordinary emotional capacity and laconicism.
It should be noted that the work of Sandro Botticelli stands apart in the art of the Italian Renaissance. Botticelli was a peer of Leonardo da Vinci, who affectionately called him “our Botticelli.”
But it is difficult to classify him as a typical master of both the Early and High Renaissance. In the world of art, he was neither a proud conqueror, like the first, nor a sovereign Master of life, like the second.
Botticelli’s soul, already torn by contradictions, feeling the beauty of the world discovered by the Renaissance, but fearing its sinfulness, could not withstand the difficult test.The fiery sermons of the monk Savonarola did their job. In the last years of his life (he died at the age of sixty-four in 1510), Botticelli no longer wrote anything.
Elegant graceful figures, frozen plastic bodies, sad melancholy faces, beautiful eyes that do not notice anything around... None of the Florentine masters could compare with Sandro Botticelli in the richness of poetic imagination, which brought him fame during his lifetime. But for three long centuries they forgot about its existence. Interest in the rarest of Italian talents arose again only in the middle of the 19th century, captivating the Pre-Raphaelite painters with the uniqueness of manners and individualization of artistic techniques, the creative subjectivity and lyricism of this painter. Botticelli took a special place in the art of the Early Renaissance not by greedy curiosity about life and experimentation, but by a passionate search for inner purity and spirituality, a special chastity that distinguishes all the images in his paintings. Botticelli survived the “war of the giants,” as the Florentines called the rivalry between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the emergence of the promising Raphael Santi.
Customers turned their backs on the once famous painter. His soul went out. Botticelli lived out his life in the brothers' house, filled with the voices of their many descendants. As an artist he died for the world. "His star according to Machiavelli ,” went out before his eyes closed.”
According to the church registers of the dead, Botticelli died in 1510, and on May 17 he was buried in the cemetery of the Church of Ognisanti in Florence, in the city where his sincerely excited art flourished, retaining its charm and charm to this day.
The following sources were used in preparing materials for this message:
N.A. Berdyaev "The Meaning of Creativity", "Vekhi" library,
http://www.bottichelli.infoall.info/txt/3pozdn.shtml, http://smallbay.ru/bottichelli.html and other sources indicated in previous posts.
This concludes our story about the work of Sandro Botticelli. I was not able to describe all of his works, and that was not the purpose of these posts. Their main goal was to introduce readers to his work and generate interest in the painting of the Early Renaissance. Those who are affected by this will find the strength and desire to delve more deeply into the study of his work.
I hope that I, perhaps not fully, have achieved my goal. It is up to the readers to judge.
Sandro Botticelli was the first European painter to find nothing sinful in a naked female body. He even saw in it an allegory of the voice of God
1 VENUS. According to ancient myth, the first ruler of the world, the sky god Uranus, was castrated by his own son Kronos. Drops of Uranus's blood fell into the sea and formed foam, from which Venus, standing on the shell, was born. In Botticelli's painting she bashfully covers her breasts and womb. Petrochuk calls this a “gesture of seductive purity.” According to art historians, the model for the image of Venus was Simonetta Vespucci, the first Florentine beauty, the lover of Lorenzo de' Medici's younger brother, Giuliano. She died in her prime from consumption.
2 SINK- a symbol of the female womb from which Venus emerges.
3 ZEPHIR- god of the western spring wind. Neoplatonists identified him with Eros, the god of love. In the myth of Venus, Zephyr, with his breath, directed the shell with the goddess to the island of Cyprus, where she set foot on the earth.
4 FLORA- wife of Zephyr, goddess of flowers. The union of Zephyr and Flora is often seen as an allegory of the unity of carnal (Flora) and spiritual (Zephyr) love.
5 ROSE- a symbol of love and love suffering caused by its thorns.
6 KAMYSH- a symbol of the modesty of Venus, which seems to be ashamed of its beauty.
7 ORA TALLO (FLOWERING)- one of the four Oras, daughters of Zeus and Themis. Ors were responsible for order in nature and patronized different seasons. Tallo “watched” the spring and was therefore considered a companion of Venus.
8 Cornflower- a symbol of fertility, as it grows among ripened grains.
9 IVY- this plant, “embracing” tree trunks, symbolizes affection and fidelity.
10 MIRT- a plant dedicated to Venus (according to the story of the ancient Roman poet Ovid, when the goddess of love set foot on the land of Cyprus, she covered her nakedness with myrtle) and therefore was considered another symbol of fertility.
11 SCARLET CLOTHES- a symbol of the divine power that beauty has over the world.
12 DASY- a symbol of innocence and purity.
13 ANEMONE- a symbol of tragic love, the cup of which Venus will have to drink on earth. According to myth, Venus fell in love with the charming shepherd Adonis. But the love was short-lived: Adonis died while hunting from the tusks of a boar. From the tears that the goddess shed over the body of her lover, the anemone was born.
14 ORANGE TREE- symbolizes hope for eternal life (orange is an evergreen plant).
Botticelli's appeal to a pagan subject, and even with nudity, may, at first glance, seem strange: in the early 1480s, the artist seemed to devote himself to Christian art. In 1481-1482, Sandro painted the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and in 1485 he created the cycle of the Virgin Mary: “Madonna and Child,” “Madonna Magnificat” and “Madonna with a Book.” But this is an external contradiction. The fact is that in terms of worldview, Botticelli was close to the Florentine Neoplatonists - a circle led by the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who sought to synthesize ancient wisdom with Christian doctrine.
According to the ideas of Neoplatonists, the incomprehensible God always embodies himself in earthly beauty, be it physical or spiritual beauty - one is impossible without the other. Thus, the pagan goddess among the Neoplatonists became an allegory of the voice of God, bringing to people the revelation of beauty, through which the soul is saved. Marsilio Ficino called Venus the nymph of Humanity, “born from heaven and more beloved than others by God Most High. Her soul is Love and Mercy, her eyes are Dignity and Generosity, her hands are Generosity and Splendor, her feet are Comeliness and Modesty.”
This synthesis of Christianity and paganism is also present in Botticelli’s work. “The composition of the “Birth of Venus,” wrote art historian Olga Petrochuk, “in an amazing... way embeds the content of the ancient myth into the medieval purely Christian scheme of “Baptism.” The appearance of the pagan goddess is thus likened to the rebirth of the soul - naked, like the soul, she emerges from the life-giving waters of baptism... The artist needed considerable courage and considerable invention to replace the figure of Christ with the victorious nakedness of a young woman - replacing the idea of salvation with asceticism with the idea of the omnipotence of Eros... Even the biblical “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters” here is equated with nothing more or less than the breath of Eros, which is embodied by the winds flying over the sea.”
Botticelli's "Venus" is the first image of a completely naked female body, where nudity does not symbolize original sin (as, for example, in the image of Eve). And who knows, if it were not for the paintings of the brave artist, Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus” (c. 1510) or Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” (1538) would have been born?
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ARTIST Sandro Botticelli 1445 - Born into a tanner's family in Florence. |
Sandro Botticelli Sandro Botticelli occupies a special place in the art of the Italian Renaissance. A contemporary of Leonardo and the young Michelangelo, an artist working side by side with the masters of the Great Renaissance, he did not, however, belong to this glorious era of Italian art, the era that summed up everything above what Italian artists had been doing for the previous two hundred years. At the same time, Botticelli can hardly be called a Quattrocentist artist in the sense that is usually associated with this concept.
It does not have the healthy spontaneity of the Quattrocentist masters, their greedy curiosity about life in everything, even its most everyday manifestations, their penchant for entertaining storytelling, a penchant that sometimes turns into naive talkativeness, their constant experimentation - in a word, that joyful discovery of the world and art as a means of understanding this world, which gives charm to even the most awkward and the most awkward and the most prosaic works of this century. Like the great masters of the High Renaissance, Botticelli is an artist of the end of an era; however, his art is not the result of the path traveled; rather, it is a denial of it and partly a return to the old, pre-Renaissance artistic language, but to an even greater extent a passionate, intense, and by the end of life even painful search for new possibilities of artistic expression, a new, more emotional artistic language. The majestic synthesis of calm, self-contained images of Leonardo and Raphael is alien to Botticelli; its pathos is not the pathos of the objective.
In all his paintings one can feel such a degree of individualization of artistic techniques, such uniqueness of manner, such nervous vibration of lines, in other words, such a degree of creative subjectivity that was alien to the art of the Renaissance.
If the masters of the Renaissance sought to express in their works the beauty and regularity of the surrounding world, then Botticelli, willingly or unwillingly, expressed primarily his own experiences, and therefore his art takes on a lyrical character and that peculiar autobiographical quality that is alien to the great Olympians - Leonardo and Raphael.
Paradoxical as it may seem, in his inner essence Botticelli is closer to Michelangelo. They are united by an avid interest in the political life of their time, a passion for religious quest, and an inextricable internal connection with the fate of their native city. This must be why both of them, like Hamlet, with such painful clarity felt in their hearts, one the tremors of the impending catastrophe, the other a terrible crack that split the world. Michelangelo survived the tragic collapse of Italian Renaissance culture and reflected it in his creations.
Botticelli did not have the opportunity to witness the events that deafened the great Florentine: he developed as an artist much earlier, in the 70-80s. 15th century, at a time that seemed to his contemporaries to be the dawn and prosperity of Florence. But he instinctively felt and expressed the inevitability of the end even before this end came.
Botticelli painted his painting "The Birth of Venus" almost at the same time when Leonardo was working on "Madonna of the Rocks" (1483), and his heartbreaking "Lamentation" ("Entombment" Munich) is contemporary with the earlier "Lamentation" ("Pieta" " Christmas", imbued with deep inner turmoil and painful memories of the execution of Savonarola.
In the works of Botticelli of the last two decades of the 15th century, those notes were sounded that much later, in the second decade of the 16th century, resulted in the comprehensive tragedy and civil sorrow of Michelangelo. Botticelli was not a titan, like Michelangelo, and the heroes of his paintings are not tragic, they are only thoughtful and sad; and Botticelli’s world, the arena of his activity, is immeasurably narrower, just as the range of his talent is incomparably smaller.
During the years of his greatest creative productivity, Botticelli was quite closely associated with the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, and many of the artist's most famous works of the 70s and 80s. written by him at the request of members of this family; others were inspired by the poems of Poliziano or reveal the influence of the literary disputes of humanist scholars, friends of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
However, it would be wrong to consider Botticelli only as a court artist of this uncrowned Duke of Florence and to regard his work as an expression of the views and tastes of his aristocratic circle, as a manifestation of feudal reaction in art. Botticelli's work has a much deeper and more universally significant character, and his connections with the Medici circle are much more complex and contradictory than it seems at first glance. It is no coincidence that his passion for the works of Savonarola, in which, along with religious frenzy, anti-aristocratic pathos and hatred of the rich were so strong and sympathy for the poor, a desire to return Florence to the patriarchal and harsh times of the democratic republic.
This passion, which he shared with Botticelli and the young Michelangelo, was apparently determined by the entire internal structure of Botticelli, his increased sensitivity to moral problems, his passionate search for inner purity and spirituality, a special chastity that distinguishes all the images in his paintings, a chastity that is by no means was not characteristic of the “pagan circle of Lorenzo”, with its very far-reaching tolerance for issues of morality, public and personal.
Botticelli studied with Filippo Lippi; Botticelli's early Madonnas repeat the compositional approach and type of this artist, one of the brightest and most original masters of the Florentine Quattrocente. In other works of Botticelli of the first period one can detect the influence of Antonio Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio.
But what is much more interesting here are those features of the new, that individual manner that is felt in these early, semi-student creations of the master, not only and not so much in the nature of the visual techniques, but in a completely special, almost elusive atmosphere of spirituality, a peculiar poetic “fanning” of the images. Botticelli's "Madonna" for the Orphanage in Florence is almost a copy of Lippi's famous "Madonna" in the Uffizi. But at the same time, as in Lippi's works, all the charm lies in the unpretentiousness with which the artist conveys in the picture the features of his beloved - her - childishly swollen lips, and a wide, slightly upturned nose, piously folded hands with chubby fingers, the dense body of a child and the perky, even somewhat cheeky smile of an angel with the face of a street boy in Botticelli’s repetition, all these features disappear: his Madonna is taller, slimmer, hers small head, narrow, sloping shoulders and beautiful long arms. Madonna Lippi is dressed in a Florentine costume, and the artist carefully conveys every detail of her clothing, right down to the clasp on the shoulder; Botticelli's Madonna has an unusually cut dress and a long cloak, the edge of which forms a beautiful, intricately curved line.
Madonna Lippi is diligently pious, she lowered her eyes, but her eyelashes tremble, she needs to make an effort not to look at the viewer; Madonna Botticelli is thoughtful, she does not notice her surroundings.
This atmosphere of deep thoughtfulness and some kind of internal disunity of the characters is felt even more strongly in another, somewhat later “Madonna” by Botticelli, in which an angel presents Mary with a vase of grapes and ears of grain. Grapes and ears of corn - wine and bread are a symbolic image of the sacrament; according to the artist, they should form the semantic and compositional center of the picture, uniting all three figures.
Leonardo set himself a similar task in the close-in-time “Benois Madonna.” In it, Mary hands the child a cruciferous flower - a symbol of the cross. But Leonardo needs this flower only to create a clearly tangible psychological connection between mother and child; he needs an object on which he can equally concentrate the attention of both and give purposefulness to their gestures.
In Botticelli, a vase with grapes also completely absorbs the attention of the characters. However, it does not unite, but rather internally separates them; looking at her thoughtfully, they forget each other. An atmosphere of reflection and inner loneliness reigns in the picture. This is greatly facilitated by the nature of the lighting, even, diffused, and almost without shadows.
Botticelli’s transparent light is not conducive to spiritual closeness, to intimate communication, while Leonardo creates the impression of twilight: it envelops the heroes, leaving them alone with each other. The same impression is left by Botticelli’s “St. Sebastian” - the most Pollaiolian of all his paintings Indeed, Sebastian's figure, his pose, and even the tree trunk to which he is tied almost exactly repeats Pollaiuolo's painting; but at Pollaiolo Sebastian is surrounded by soldiers, they shoot him - and he experiences suffering: his legs tremble, his back is convulsively arched, his face is raised to the sky. the figure of Botticell's hero expresses complete indifference to his surroundings, and even the position of his hands tied behind his back is perceived rather as a gesture expressing deep thought; the same thoughtfulness is written on his face, with slightly raised eyebrows as if in mournful surprise. "St. Sebastian" dates from 1474.
The second half of the 70s and the eighties should be regarded as a period of creative maturity and greatest flowering of the artist.
It begins with the famous “Adoration of the Magi” (c. 1475), followed by all of Botticelli’s most significant works. Scientists still disagree on the dating of individual paintings, and this primarily concerns the two most famous paintings: “Spring” and “Birth” Venus", the first of which some researchers attribute to the end of 1470, others prefer a later date - 1480. Be that as it may, "Spring" was written during the peak period of Botticelli's work and precedes the somewhat later painting "The Birth of Venus". Undoubtedly, the paintings “Pallas and the Centaur”, “Mars and Venus”, the famous tondo depicting the Madonna surrounded by angels (“The Greatness of the Madonna”), as well as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel (1481- 1482) and the frescoes of the Villa Lemmi (1486), painted on the occasion of the wedding of Lorenzo Tornabuoni (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent) and Giovanna degli Albizzi.
The famous illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy also date back to this period. As for Botticelli's painting "Allegory of Slander", a variety of assumptions have been made in this regard.
Some researchers attribute this painting to the time of “Spring” and “Venus”, that is, to the years of Botticelli’s greatest passion for antiquity; while others, on the contrary, emphasize the moralizing nature of the work and its heightened expression and see in it the work of the 1490s.
There is still much that is Quattrocentist in the painting “The Adoration of the Magi” (Uffizi), first of all the somewhat naive determination with which Botticelli, like Gozzoli and Lippi, turns the gospel scene into a scene of a crowded celebration. Perhaps in no other painting by Botticelli is there such a variety of poses, gestures, costumes, decorations, nowhere do they make so much noise and talk.
And yet, very special notes suddenly sound: the figure of Lorenzo Medici, proud and reserved, arrogantly silent in the crowd of his lively friends, or the thoughtful Giuliano, wrapped in a black velvet doublet. The male figure, gracefully draped in a light blue cloak, also involuntarily attracts attention. which seems light, almost transparent, and makes you remember the airy clothes of the Graces in the painting “Spring”; and the general range of colors with predominant cold tones; and greenish-golden reflections of light falling from nowhere, lighting up in unexpected glares either on the embroidered border of the cloak, or on the golden cap, or on the shoes.
And this fleeting, wandering light, falling either from above or from below, gives the scene an unusual, fantastic, timeless character. The uncertainty of lighting also corresponds to the uncertainty of the spatial structure of the composition: the figures in the background are in some cases larger than the figures located at the front edge of the picture; their spatial relationships with each other are so unclear that it is difficult to say where the figures are located - close or far from the viewer.
The depicted scene is transformed here into some kind of fairy tale, sometimes outside of time and space. Botticelli was a contemporary of Leonardo; he worked with him in Verrocchio's workshop. Undoubtedly, he was familiar with all the subtleties of perspective constructions and light and shadow modeling, which Italian artists had been mastering for about 50 years. For them, scientific perspective and volume modeling served as a powerful means of recreating objective reality in art.
Among these artists were true poets of perspective, and first of all Piero della Francesca, in whose works the perspective construction of space and the transfer of the volume of objects turned into a magical means of creating beauty. Leonardo and Raphael were both great poets of chiaroscuro and perspective. But for many Quattrocentist artists, perspective turned into a fetish to which they sacrificed everything, and above all beauty.
They often replaced the figurative recreation of reality with a plausible reproduction of it, an illusionistic trick, an optical illusion, and were naively happy when they managed to depict a figure from some unexpected angle, forgetting that such a figure in most cases gives the impression of being unnatural and unaesthetic, that is , ultimately, is a lie in art. Botticelli’s contemporary, Dominico Ghirlandaio, was such a boring prose writer.
Ghirlandaio's paintings and his numerous frescoes give the impression of detailed chronicles; they have great documentary value, but their artistic value is very small. But among the Quattrocentist artists there were masters who created fairy tales from their canvases; their paintings, awkward, slightly funny, at the same time full of naive charm. Such an artist was Paolo Uccello; in his work there are strong elements of living folk fantasy, opposed to the extremes of Renaissance rationalism.
Botticelli's paintings are far from the almost popular naivety of Ucello's paintings. Yes, this could not be expected from an artist familiar with all the subtleties of Renaissance humanism, a friend of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, involved in Neoplatonism, cultivated in the Medici circle. His paintings “Spring” and “Birth of Venus” are inspired by the exquisite poems of Poliziano; perhaps they were inspired by the festivities at the Medici court, and, obviously, Botticelli put some complex philosophical and allegorical meaning into them; maybe he really tried to merge the features of pagan, physical, Christian and spiritual beauty in the image of Aphrodite.
Scientists are still arguing about all this. But there is also an absolute, undeniable beauty in these paintings, understandable to everyone, which is why they have not yet lost their meaning. Botticelli turns to the eternal motifs of a folk tale, to images created by folk fantasy and therefore universally significant. Can the figurative meaning of a tall female figure in a white dress woven with flowers, with a wreath on golden hair, with a garland of flowers around her neck, with flowers in her hands, be in doubt? and with the face of a young girl, almost a teenager, slightly embarrassed, smiling timidly? Among all peoples, in all languages, this image has always served as an image of spring; in folk festivals in Rus' dedicated to the welcoming of spring, when young girls went out into the fields to “curl wreaths,” it is just as appropriate as in Botticelli’s painting.
And no matter how much scientists argue about who is depicted by a half-naked female figure in transparent clothes, with long scattered hair and a branch of greenery in her teeth - Flora, Spring and Zephyr, her figurative meaning is completely clear: among the ancient Greeks she was called a dryad or nymph, in folk in European fairy tales as a forest fairy, in Russian fairy tales as a mermaid.
And of course, the flying figure on the right is associated with some dark evil forces of nature, from the flapping of whose wings the trees groan and bend. And these tall, slender trees, ever green and ever blooming, hung with golden fruits, they can equally depict an ancient garden Hesperides, and the magical land of fairy tales, where summer reigns forever. Botticelli's appeal to images of folk fantasy is not accidental.
The poets of the Medici circle, and Lorenzo himself, widely used in their work the motifs and forms of Italian folk poetry, combining it with “graceful” ancient poetry, Latin and Greek. But whatever the political motives of this interest in folk art, especially among Lorenzo himself, who pursued mainly demagogic goals, its significance for the development of Italian literature cannot be denied.
Botticelli turns not only to traditional characters of folk legends and fairy tales; in his paintings “Spring” and “Birth of Venus”, individual objects acquire the character of generalized poetic symbols. Unlike Leonardo, a passionate researcher, with fantastic accuracy, who strove to reproduce all the structural features of plants, Botticelli depicts “trees in general,” a song-like image of a tree, endowing it, as in a fairy tale, with the most beautiful qualities: it is slender, with a smooth trunk, with lush foliage, strewn with flowers and fruits at the same time.
And what kind of botanist would undertake to determine the type of flowers scattered in the meadow under the feet of Spring, or those that she holds in the folds of her dress: they are lush, fresh and fragrant, they look like roses, and carnations, and peonies; this is “a flower in general,” the most wonderful of flowers. And in the landscape itself, Botticelli does not seek to recreate this or that landscape; he only denotes nature, naming its basic and ever-repeating elements: trees, sky, earth in “Spring”; sky, sea, trees, earth in "The Birth of Venus". This is “nature in general,” beautiful and unchanging.
Depicting this earthly paradise, this “golden age,” Botticelli excludes the categories of space and time from his paintings. The sky is visible behind the slender tree trunks, but there is no distance, no perspective lines leading into the depths, beyond the boundaries of what is depicted.
Even the meadow along which the figures walk does not create the impression of depth; it looks like a carpet hung on the wall, it is impossible to walk on it. This is probably why all the movements of the figures have some special, timeless character: Botticelli’s people depict movement rather than move. Spring quickly moves forward, her foot almost touches the front edge of the picture, but she will never step over it, never do the next step; she has nowhere to step, there is no horizontal plane in the picture, and there is no stage area on which the figures could move freely.
The figure of the walking Venus is also motionless: it is too strictly inscribed in the arch of bent trees and surrounded by a halo of greenery. The poses and movements of the figures acquire a strangely enchanted character, they are devoid of specific meaning, devoid of a certain purposefulness: Zephyr stretches out his hands, but does not touch Flora; Spring only touches, but does not take flowers; Venus's right hand is extended forward, as if she wants to touch something, but remains frozen in the air; the gestures of the intertwined hands of the Graces are the gestures of dance; there is no facial expression in them; they do not even reflect the state of their soul. There is some kind of gap between the inner life of people and the external pattern of their poses and gestures.
And although the picture depicts a certain scene, its characters do not communicate with each other, they are self-absorbed, silent, thoughtful, and internally lonely. They don’t even notice each other. The only thing that unites them is the common rhythm that permeates the picture, like a gust of wind rushing in from outside.
And all the figures obey this rhythm; weak-willed and light, they look like dry leaves that are driven by the wind. The most striking expression of this can be the figure of Venus floating on the sea. She stands on the edge of a light shell, barely touching it with her feet, and the wind carries her towards the ground. In Renaissance paintings, a person is always the center of the composition; the whole world is built around him and for him, and it is he who is the main character of the dramatic narrative, an active exponent of the content contained in the picture.
However, in Botticelli’s paintings a person loses this active role, he becomes more of a passive element, he is subject to forces acting from the outside, he surrenders to a rush of feeling or a rush of rhythm. This feeling of extrapersonal forces subjugating a person who has ceased to control himself sounded in Botticelli’s paintings as a premonition of a new an era when the anthropocentrism of the Renaissance is replaced by the consciousness of personal helplessness, the idea that there are forces in the world that are independent of man, beyond the control of his will. The first symptoms of these changes in society, the first rumbles of the storm that struck Italy a few decades later and brought an end to the Renaissance, were the decline of Florence at the end of the 15th century and the religious fanaticism that gripped the city under the influence of the preaching of Savonarola, a fanaticism to which it succumbed to some extent and Botticelli himself, and who forced the Florentines, contrary to common sense and centuries-old respect for beauty, to throw works of art into the fire.
The deeply developed sense of self-importance, the calm and confident self-affirmation that captivates us in Leonardo’s “La Gioconda” is alien to the characters in Botticelli’s paintings.
To feel this, it is enough to look at the faces of the characters in his Sistine frescoes and especially the frescoes of the Villa Lemmy. They feel inner uncertainty, the ability to surrender to an impulse and the expectation of this impulse, ready to swoop.
All this is expressed with particular force in Botticelli’s illustrations in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here, even the very nature of the drawing - with one thin line, without shadows and without pressure - creates a feeling of complete weightlessness of the figures; fragile and seemingly transparent. The figures of Dante and his companion, repeated several times on each sheet, appear in one or another part of the picture; disregarding either the physical law of gravity or the methods of constructing images accepted in his era, the artist places them either from below, sometimes from above, sometimes sideways and even upside down. Sometimes one gets the feeling that the artist himself has escaped from the sphere of gravity and has lost the sense of top and bottom. The illustration for “Paradise” makes a particularly strong impression. It is difficult to name another artist who, with such convincingness and such simple means, could convey the feeling of limitless space and limitless light.
In these drawings the figures of Dante and Beatrice are endlessly repeated.
One is struck by the almost manic insistence with which Botticelli, on 20 sheets, always returns to the same composition - Beatrice and Dante, enclosed in a circle; Only their poses and gestures vary slightly. There is a feeling of a lyrical theme, as if haunting the artist, from which he cannot and does not want to free himself. And one more feature appears in the last drawings of the series: Beatrice, this embodiment of beauty, is ugly and almost two heads taller than Dante! There is no doubt that with this large-scale difference, Botticelli sought to convey the greater significance of the image of Beatrice and, perhaps, the feeling of her superiority and his own insignificance that Dante experienced in her presence. The problem of the relationship between physical and spiritual beauty constantly arose before Botticelli, and he tried to solve it by giving the pagan beautiful body of his Venus the face of a pensive Madonna.
Beatrice's face is not beautiful, but she has strikingly beautiful, large and reverently inspired hands and some special impetuous grace of movements.
Who knows, maybe the sermons of Savonarola, who hated all bodily beauty as the embodiment of the pagan, sinful, played a role in this revaluation of the categories of physical and spiritual beauty. The end of the eighties can be considered the period from which a turning point in Botticelli’s work began. Apparently, internally he broke with the Medici circle even during the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who died in 1492. Antique, mythological subjects disappear from his work.
This last period includes the paintings “The Annunciation” (Uffizi), “The Wedding of Our Lady” (Uffizi, 1490), “The Nativity” - the last of Botticelli’s dated works (1500), dedicated to the memory of Savonarola. As for the Munich “Entombment,” some researchers attribute it to the end of the 90s; according to others, this painting arose later, in the early years of the 16th century, just like paintings from the life of St. Zinovia. If in the paintings of the 1480s one could feel a sensitive mood, a readiness to surrender to the impulse, then in these later works of Botticelli, the characters already lose all power over themselves.
A strong, almost ecstatic feeling takes over them, their eyes are half-closed, their movements are exaggerated expression, impetuosity, as if they no longer control their body and act in a state of some strange hypnotic sleep. Already in the painting “The Annunciation” the artist introduces unusual confusion into a scene that is usually so idyllic.
The angel bursts into the room and quickly falls to his knees, and behind him, like streams of air cut during flight, his transparent, glass-like, barely visible covers rise. His right hand with a large hand and long nervous fingers is extended to Mary, and Mary , as if blind, as if in oblivion, stretches out her hand towards him. And it seems as if internal currents, invisible but clearly perceptible, flow from his hand to Mary’s hand and make her whole body tremble and bend. In the painting “The Wedding of Our Lady,” the faces of the angels reveal a stern, intense obsession, and in the swiftness of their poses and gestures there is an almost Bacchic selflessness.
In this picture one can clearly feel not only a complete disregard for the laws of perspective construction, but also a decisive violation of the principle of unity of point of view on images. This unity of point of view, the focus of the image on the perceiving point of view is one of the achievements of Renaissance painting, one of the manifestations of the anthropocentrism of the era: the picture is being painted for a person, for a viewer, and all objects are depicted taking into account his perception - either from above, or from below, or at eye level, depending on where the ideal, imaginary viewer is located. This principle reached its highest development in Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” and in the frescoes of Raphael’s Station della Segnatura.
Botticelli's painting "The Wedding of Our Lady", like his illustrations for the "Divine Comedy", was built without any consideration of the point of view of the perceiving subject, and there is something irrational in the arbitrariness of its construction. This is expressed even more decisively in the famous “Nativity” of 1500; the foreground figures here are half the size of the background figures, and for each belt of figures arranged in tiers, and often even for each individual figure, its own horizon of perception is created.
Moreover, the point of view on the figures does not express their objective location, but rather their internal significance; Thus, Mary, bending over the child, is depicted at the bottom, and Joseph, sitting next to her, at the top.
Michelangelo used a similar technique 40 years later in his fresco “The Last Judgment.” In the Munich “Entombment” by Botticelli, the angularity and some woodiness of the figures, making one recall a similar painting by the Dutch artist Rogier van der Weyden, are combined with the tragic pathos of the Baroque. The body of the dead Christ with his heavily fallen hand anticipates some of Caravaggio's images, and the head of the unconscious Mary brings to mind images of Bernini.
Botticelli was a direct witness to the first symptoms of the advancing feudal reaction. He lived in Florence, in a city that for several centuries stood at the head of the economic, political and cultural life of Italy, in a city with centuries-old republican traditions, which is rightfully considered the forge of Italian Renaissance culture. This is probably why the crisis of the Renaissance emerged, First of all, here and precisely here it took on such a stormy and such a tragic character.
The last 25 years of the 15th century for Florence were years of gradual agony and death of the republic and heroic and unsuccessful attempts to save it. In this struggle for democratic Florence, against the growing power of the Medici, the positions of its most passionate defenders strangely coincided with the positions of Savonarola’s supporters, who tried to return Italy to the times of the Middle Ages, to force it to abandon all the achievements of Renaissance humanism and Renaissance art.
On the other hand, it was the Medici, who took reactionary positions in politics, who acted as defenders of humanism and patronized writers, scientists, and artists in every possible way. In such a situation, the artist’s position was especially difficult. It is no coincidence that Leonardo da Vinci, who was equally alien to both political and religious hobbies, left Florence and, seeking to gain artistic freedom, moved to Milan. Botticelli was a man of a different kind. Inextricably linking his fate with the fate of Florence, he painfully tossed between the humanism of the Medici circle and the religious and moral pathos of Savonarola.
And when, in the last years of the 15th century, Botticelli decides this dispute in favor of religion, he falls silent as an artist. It is therefore quite understandable that from the last decade of his life almost none of his works have reached us. List of references: I. Danilova “Sandro Botticelli”, “ART” ed. "Enlightenment" (c) 1969 E. Rotenberg "The Art of Italy of the 15th Century" ed. "Art" Moscow (c) 1967 Jose Antonio de Urbina "The Prado", Scala publications ltd, London 1988-93.
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Late paintings by Sandro Botticelli
In Florence at that time fiery, revolutionary
sermons of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. And while in city squares
they burned “vanity” (precious utensils, luxurious garments and works
art on subjects of pagan mythology), hearts were inflamed
Florentines and a revolution flared up, more spiritual than social,
striking first of all those very sensitive, sophisticated minds,
that they were the creators of the elitist intellectualism of Lorenzo's time.
Revaluation of values, decline in interest in speculative illusory
constructions, a sincere need for renewal, a desire again
to acquire strong, true moral and spiritual foundations were signs
deep internal discord experienced by many Florentines (in
including Botticelli) already in the last years of the life of the Magnificent and
reaching its climax on November 9, 1494 - on the feast of the Savior and the day
expulsion of the Medici.
Lamentation of Christ. 1495 Milan. Poldi Museum
Pezzoli
Botticelli, who lived under the same roof with his brother Simone,
convinced "pianoni" (lit. "crybaby" - that's what the followers were called
Savonarola), was strongly influenced by Fra Girolamo, which could not help but
leave a deep mark on his painting. This is eloquent
evidenced by two altar images "Lamentation of Christ" from Munich
The Old Pinacoteca and the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. The paintings are dated
around 1495 and were respectively in the church of San Paolino and
Santa Maria Maggiore.
Align="center" border="0" height="600px;" width="700px;">
Position in the coffin. Sandro Botticell. 1495-1500
Munich. Old Pinikothek.
The accusatory speeches of Fra Girolamo Savonarola did not leave
Botticelli indifferent; religious themes became predominant in his
art. In 1489-1490 he wrote "The Annunciation" for
Cistercian monks (now in the Uffizi Gallery).
Annunciation. Sandro Botticelli.
In 1495, the artist completed the last of his works for
The Medici, having written several works for the side at the Villa in Trebbio
branches of this family, later called "dei Popolani". In 1501
the artist created "Mystical Christmas". For the first time he signed his
painting and put a date on it.
"Mystical Christmas" Sandro Botticelli.
At the heart of Botticell's drama, deeply personal,
which left a stamp on all his art - the polarity of two worlds. WITH
On the one hand, this is the humanistic culture that has developed around the Medici
culture with its knightly and pagan motifs; on the other hand -
the reformist and ascetic spirit of Savonarola, for whom Christianity
determined not only his personal ethics, but also the principles of civil and
political life, so that the activity of this “Christ, the king
Florentine" (the inscription that the followers of Savonarola wanted to make
above the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria) was in full
the opposite of the magnificent and tyrannical rule of the Medici.
In Botticelli's later paintings there is no longer timid sadness, but
a cry of despair, as, for example, in his two Lamentations of Christ (in
Milan and Munich), filled with deep sorrow. Here the lines of the figures are similar
mercilessly rising waves.
In the picture "Abandoned"(Rome) we see
a female figure sitting alone on the stone steps, with whose grief
Botticelli may be identifying with his own grief.
