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Botticelli: lyrical precision
(by Sister Wendy Beckett)
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After Masaccio, Sandro Botticelli comes as the next great painter of the Florentine
tradition. The new, sharply contoured, slender form and rippling
sinuous line that is synonymous with Botticelli was influenced by
the brilliant, precise draftsmanship of the Pollaiuolo brothers, who
trained not only as painters, but as goldsmiths, engravers,
sculptors, and embroidery designers. However, the rather stiff,
scientifically formulaic appearance of the Pollaiuolos' painting of
The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, for instance, which
clearly follows anatomical dictates, finds no place in the paintings
of Botticelli. His sophisticated understanding of perspective,
anatomy, and the Humanist debate of the Medici court never
overshadows the sheer poetry of his vision. Nothing is more
gracious, in lyrical beauty, than Botticelli's mythological
paintings Primavera and The Birth of Venus, where the
pagan story is taken with reverent seriousness and Venus is the
Virgin Mary in another form. But it is also significant that no one
has ever agreed on the actual subject of Primavera,
and a whole shelf in a library can be taken up with different
theories; but though scholars may argue, we need no theories to make
Primavera dear to us. In this allegory of life,
beauty, and knowledge united by love, Botticelli catches the
freshness of an early spring morning, with the pale light shining
through the tall, straight trees, already laden with their golden
fruit: oranges, or the mythical golden apples of the Hesperides? At
the right, Zephyr, the warm wind of spring, embraces the Roman
goddess Flora, or perhaps the earth nymph Chloris, diaphanously clad
and running from his amorous clasp. She is shown at the moment of
her metamorphosis into Flora, as her breath turns to flowers that
take root over the countryside. Across from her, we see Flora as a
goddess, in all her glory (or perhaps her daughter Persephone, who
spends half her time beneath the earth, as befits the patron saint
of flowers) as she steps forward clad in blossoms. In the center is
a gentle Venus, all dignity and promise of spiritual joy, and above
her, the infant Cupid aims his loving arrows. To the left, the Three
Graces dance in a silent reverie removed from the others in time
also, as indicated by the breeze that wafts their hair and clothes
in the opposite direction from Zephyr's gusts. Mercury, the
messenger of the gods, provides another male counterpart to the
Zephyr. Zephyr initiates, breathing love into the warmth he brings
to a wintry world, and Mercury sublimates, taking the hopes of
humanity and opening the way to the gods.
Everything in this miraculous work is profoundly life-enhancing. Yet
it offers no safeguards against pain or accident: Cupid is
blindfolded as he flies, and the Graces seem enclosed in their own
private bliss. So the poetry has an underlying wistfulness, a sort
of musing nostalgia for something that we cannot possess, yet
something with which we feel so deeply in tune. Even the gentle yet
strong colors speak of this ambivalence: the figures have an
unmistakable presence and weight as they stand before us, moving in
the slowest of rhythms. Yet they also seem insubstantial, a dream of
what might be rather than a sight of what is.
This longing, this hauntingly intangible sadness is even more
visible in the lovely face of Venus as she is wafted to our dark
shores by the winds, and the garment, rich though it is, waits ready
to cover up her sweet and naked body. We cannot look upon love
unclothed, says The Birth of Venus; we are too weak,
maybe too polluted, to bear the beauty.
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Neo-platonism
This was a school of
philosophy in which
elements of the classical
Greek systems of
Plato, Pythagoras,
and Aristotle were
combined. It was first
established in the 3rd
century, but during
the 15th century it
was revised and made
compatible with
Christian belief.
Neo-Platonism entailed
a-view of the universe
in which ideas were
more important than
things, and the belief
that the soul is endowed
with virtues and is
capable of an inner
ascent to God. Cosimo
de' Medici founded the
Platonic Academy of
Florence in 1459,
employing the foremost
theorist and classics
translator of the time,
Marsilio E. Ficino.
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NEO-PLATONISM
The Birth of Venus, in fact, contains the first monumental image
since Roman times of the nude goddess in a pose derived from
classical statues of Venus. Moreover, the subject of the picture is
clearly meant to be serious, even solemn. How could such images be
justified in a Christian civilization, without subjecting both
artist and patron to the accusation of neo-paganism? To understand
this paradox, we must consider the meaning of our picture, and the
general use of classical subjects in Early Renaissance art. During
the Middle Ages, classical form had become divorced from classical
subject matter. Artists could only draw upon the ancient repertory
of poses, gestures, expressions, and types by changing the identity
of their sources. Philosophers became apostles, Orpheus turned into
Adam, Hercules was now Samson. When medieval artists had occasion to
represent the pagan gods, they based their pictures on literary
descriptions rather than visual models. This was the situation, by
and large, until the mid-fifteenth century. Only with Pollaiuolo—and
Mantegna in northern Italy—does classical form begin to rejoin
classical content. Pollaiuolo's lost paintings of the Labors of
Hercules (about 1465) mark the earliest instance, so far as we know,
of large-scale subjects from classical mythology depicted in a style
inspired by ancient monuments.
In the Middle Ages, classical myths had at times been interpreted
didactically, however remote the analogy, as allegories of Christian
precepts. Europa abducted by the bull, for instance, could be
declared to signify the soul redeemed by Christ. But such pallid
constructions were hardly an adequate excuse for reinvesting the
pagan gods with their ancient beauty and strength. To fuse the
Christian faith with ancient mythology, rather than merely relate
them, required a more sophisticated argument. This was provided by
the Neo-Pla-tonic philosophers, whose foremost representative,
Marsilio Ficino, enjoyed tremendous prestige during the later years
of the fifteenth century and after. Ficino's thought was based as
much on the mysticism of Plotinus as on the authentic
works of Plato. He believed that the life of the universe, including
human life, was linked to God by a spiritual circuit continuously ascending and
descending,so that all revelation, whether from
the Bible. Plato, or classical myths, was one. Similarly, he proclaimed that beauty,
love, and beatitude, being
phases of this same circuit, were one. Thus Neo-Platonists could invoke the "celestial
Venus" (that is, the nude Venus born of the sea, as in our picture) interchangeably
with the Virgin Mary, as
the source of "divine love' (meaning the recognition of divine beauty). This celestial
Venus, according to Ficino, dwells purely in the sphere of
Mind, while her twin, the ordinary Venus, engenders
"human love."
Once we understand that Botticelli's picture has this quasi-religious meaning, it seems less
astonishing that the two wind gods on the left look so much like angel
and that the personification of
Spring on the right, who welcomes Venus ashore, recalls the traditional relation of
St. John to the Saviour in the Baptism of Christ (compare fig. 431). Aa
baptism is a "rebirth in God," so the
birth of Venus evokes the hope for "rebirth" from which the
Renaissance takes its name. Thanks to the fluidity of Neo-Platonic doctrine, the
number of possible associations to be linked with our
painting is almost limitless. All of them, however, like the celestial Venus
herself, "dwell in the sphere of Mind,"
and Botticelli's deity would hardly be a fit vessel for them if she were less ethereal.
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The Birth of Venus
This secular work was painted onto canvas, which was a less
expensive painting surface than the wooden panels used in church and
court pictures. A wooden surface would certainly be impractical for
a work on this scale. Canvas is known to have been the preferred
material for the paintings of nonreligious and pagan subjects that
were sometimes commissioned to decorate country villas in
15th-century Italy.
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The Birth of Venus
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |

The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The west wind
Zephyr and Chloris fly with limbs entwined as a twofold entity: the
ruddy Zephyr (his name is Greek for "the west wind") is puffing
vigorously, while the fair Chloris gently sighs the warm breath that
wafts Venus ashore. All around them fall roses -each with a golden
heart - which, according to legend, came into being at Venus's
birth.
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The shell
Botticelli portrays Venus in the very first suggestion of action,
with a complex and beautiful series of twists and turns, as she is
about to step off her giant gilded scallop shell onto the shore.
Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the
god Uranus - the severed genitals fell into the sea and fertilized
it. Here what we see is actually not Venus's birth out of the waves,
but the moment when, having been conveyed by the shell, she lands at
Paphos in Cyprus.
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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Wooded shore
The trees form part of a flowering orange grove - corresponding to
the sacred garden of the Hesperides in Greek myth - and each small
white blossom is tipped with gold. Gold is used throughout the
painting, accentuating its role as a precious object and echoing the
divine status of Venus. Each dark green leaf has a gold spine and
outline, and the tree trunks are highlighted with short diagonal
lines of gold.
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Nymph
The nymph may well be
one of the three Home,
or "The Hours," Greek
goddesses of the seasons,
who were attendants to
Venus. Both her lavishly
decorated dress and
the gorgeous robe she
holds out to Venus are
embroidered with red
and white daisies, yellow primroses, and blue cornflowers -
all spring flowers appropriate to the theme of birth. She wears a
garland of myrtle - the tree of Venus -
and a sash of pink roses,
as worn by the goddess Flora in Botticelli's Primavera.
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Birth of Venus (detail)
c. 1485
Tempera on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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