Sandro botticelli
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Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, nicknamed Sandro Botticelli (Florence, March 1, 1445 - Florence, May 17, 1510), was a painter of the Quattrocento Italian. He belongs, in turn, to the third generation of the 14th century, headed by Lorenzo de' Medici the Magnificent and Angelo Poliziano. They sought the freedom to conduct themselves humanely, collected from classical antiquity.Giorgio Vasari narrates, in his Vita of Botticelli, from his childhood to his death. This work belongs to Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. Less than a hundred years later, this stage, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was considered by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age". This is due to the artistic splendor reached in Florence at the end of the XV century.
The artist's posthumous reputation waned markedly in the following centuries, but was recovered at the end of the 19th century; Since then, his work has been considered the epitome of the linear grace of early Renaissance painting. The Birth of Venus and Spring are two of the best-known Florentine masterpieces today. They were first exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, in 1815.
Biography and work
Youth
He was born in Florence, in a working-class neighborhood in the Solferino suburb. To this same parish of Solferino or All Saints belonged the Vespucci, allies of the Medicis, and from whom he would receive orders.
He was the youngest of the four children of the marriage formed by Mariano di Vanni di Amedeo Filipepi, a tanner by trade, and his wife Smeralda. When he was born, his older brother Giovanni was 25 years old, and it is believed that she adopted him and raised him. Giovanni had the nickname Botticello , without it being known if he received the nickname because of his fatness or because he was a heavy drinker; other sources indicate that it was his brother Antonio who had this nickname. From him derives the nickname Botticelli. In 1458, they acquired a country villa at Careggi, as his father's business was prospering. It was precisely there that the Florentine Platonic Academy was established. Botticelli would receive later influences from this.
The family came into contact with Giovanni di Paolo, for whom Leon Battista Alberti designed the Rucellai palace, the Holy Sepulcher in the Rucellai chapel, and the façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella. Because of Alberti's importance, Sandro read his treatise De Pictura (1436) in detail. In many cases, he followed his recommendations.He did not become an apprentice until he was fourteen years old, which would indicate that he received a more complete education than other Renaissance artists. According to Vasari, he was first apprenticed to a goldsmith with his brother Antonio de él in 1458. Acceding to the boy's wishes, his father sent him to the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi, in Prato (1464-1467). Botticelli received his greatest influences from this painter: the synthesis between the new control of three-dimensional forms, the expressive delicacy in faces and gestures, decorative details (inherited from the late Gothic style) and an intimate style. Many of Botticelli's early works have been attributed to his master, and even today the authorship remains uncertain. Curiously, years later, Botticelli ended up being a teacher, and having Filippo's son, Filippino Lippi, in his workshop.
To a lesser extent, he was influenced by the monumentality of Masaccio. In 1467 Sandro returned to Florence, frequenting the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, where he worked alongside Leonardo da Vinci. A whole series of Madonnas influenced by Lippi dates from this period.
Early works
By 1470 Botticelli would have his own workshop. Already then his work is characterized by a conception of the figure as seen in bas-relief, painted with clear contours, and minimizing the strong contrasts of light and shadow that would indicate fully modeled forms. For that same year he made The Virgin with the Child and two angels . It is the first altarpiece that he made that is preserved. With this work he creates a kind of stage-theater that shows the historical context of the Renaissance.
The Medici soon became aware of his talent, and from them, he received numerous commissions. But his closeness to the family is earlier. He was recommended to Pietro de Cosimo de' Medici, Lorenzo's father, by Filippo Lippi. The Portrait of a Man with the Medal of Cosimo the Elder (1474) dates from this period. He carried out in the house of the Medici many works for Lorenzo de' Medici. In the characters of the Adoration of the Magi (1475), «they are portrayed as Cosimo the Elder, kneeling before the Child, his son Pedro de Cosimo de' Medici in the center below, Juliano de' Medici and Lorenzo de Medici in the group on the left, next to him Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola and, on the far right, looking at the viewer, what is considered a self-portrait of Botticelli", according to Vasari in his Vita de Botticelli. This work, which he painted for the church of Santa Maria Novella, caught the attention of the Medicis. He began working for them by painting a banner for Giuliano de' Medici's tournament (1475), extolled by Poliziano in his Stanze. His repeated contacts with this family were undoubtedly useful in guaranteeing him political protection and creating the ideal conditions for the production of his numerous masterpieces.
In 1470 he received an important commission: The fortress. One of the paintings on Virtues for the Chamber of the Merchants' Court, for the series of Virtues executed by Piero Pollaiuolo. This indicates that by then, at about 30 years of age, he must have already executed outstanding works. That same year he was commissioned to paint two small works, Historias de Judit . This story was one of the most used during the quattrocento. Giovanni Boccaccio includes her in his History of Famous Women.
In 1472 he joined the Compañía de San Lucas, a guild of painters. In the following years Botticelli became very famous, to the point of being called to Pisa to paint a fresco in the cathedral of him, now lost.
Around 1474 he made San Sebastián, to decorate a column in the Florentine church of Santa María la Mayor.
Mature Works
In 1478 the Pazzi conspiracy took place (1478), in which Lorenzo the Magnificent's brother, Juliano de' Medici, was assassinated. Sandro frescoed the portraits of the conspirators Jacopo, Francesco and Renato de Pazzi and Archbishop Salviati, hanged, on the Customs Gate. They were erased in 1494. Several commemorative portraits of the late Juliano de' Medici date from this period. Due to the close relationship between Lorenzo and Botticelli, the latter commissioned him two works of a political nature. He made Pallas and the Centaur to commemorate the triumph of the Medici faction over the Pazzi faction. This painting is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Botticelli. After these political paintings, Botticelli went to Rome to decorate the Sistine Chapel, then recently built. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV called on a number of prominent Florentine and Umbrian artists, including Botticelli, to paint frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.
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According to Vasari, Botticelli was in charge of directing and coordinating the set of frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The iconological program was the supremacy of the papacy. To carry out the work, the painters had to accept representational conventions common to all, so that the final work would be homogeneous: they used the same scale of dimensions, the same rhythmic structure and landscape representation, a single chromatic range with gold decorations that make the paintings glow with the lighting of torches and candles. In this common work, Sandro's contribution was moderately successful, making three boxes: Punishment of Core, Datan and Abiram, Facts of the life of Moses and The temptation of Christ (1481-1482). Most of the figures of pontiffs located in the niches belong to his workshop. Although only three of the stories are his. After his stay in Rome (1481-1482), Botticelli returned to Florence, and continued his career as a court painter.
He became fond of reading Dante. "Being of a sophisticated mind, there he wrote a commentary on a passage from Dante and illustrated the Inferno which he himself printed, devoting much time to it, and this abstention from work led to serious disorders in his life." This is how Vasari spoke of the first printed Dante (1481) with Botticelli's decorations, not imagining that the new art of printing could interest an artist. Botticelli as a draftsman offers a personal interpretation, which transcends humanism.
The four panels of The History of Nastagio degli Onesti (1483) were commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent. These were a wedding gift from Lorenzo to Giannozzo Pucci, on the occasion of his marriage to Lucrezia Bini. They narrated the legend taken from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron.
Between 1478 and 1486, he made The frescoes of Villa Lemmi. They were discovered in 1873. It includes Ficino's Neoplatonic ideas on Love. In the mid-1480s Botticelli worked on a large cycle of frescoes with Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi for the villa of Lorenzo the Magnificent near Volterra; Furthermore, he painted many frescoes in Florentine churches.
In 1491 Botticelli was part of a committee to decide on the façade of the Florence cathedral.
The last known works by Botticelli to date are Stories of Lucretia, Stories of Virginia and Life of Saint Cenobius (1500- 1504). The first two were, according to Giorgio Vasari, destined for Giovanni Vespucci's palace.
Last years
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It is said that he fell into poverty, and would have starved to death had it not been for the diligent help of his former employers. The truth is that he continued to produce works, although in a more dramatic tone and with a conscious stylistic regression towards ancient models, as can be seen in the series on the Life of San Cenobio and the Nativity mystique (1501), considered his last works.
Botticelli created the Florentine type of woman. But no concrete love of Botticelli is known, nor allusion to sentimental excesses; he had a “horror of marriage.” He never married. He does seem to have had a close relationship with Simonetta Vespucci, who appears in several of his works and seems to have served as the inspiration for many of the female figures in the artist's paintings.
Vasari says that he was an active piagnone ('crybaby'; that was the name of those who had given themselves body and soul to the purifying movement of Girolamo Savonarola); However, despite what Vasari says, he was able to remain in Florence and none of his property was confiscated after the fall of the religious leader.
In 1502 he was anonymously denounced for sodomy with one of his assistants, but the charges were later dismissed. In 1502-1505 he appeared as a member of the committee, with Lorenzo di Credi, that was to decide the location of Michelangelo's David.
Dating from 1502 is his famous writing relating to the creation of a kind of newspaper known as beceri, of a satirical nature, intended for the most part to cheer up the reading of the nobles of Renaissance society. Such a project, however, remained just that, never being carried out.
He died on May 17, 1510 and was buried in his parish, the church of Ognissanti, in Florence, for which he had made one of his great works in 1480, the fresco of Saint Augustine. Upon his death, the only true heir to his art was Filippino Lippi, who shares with him the concern present in his last works.
Masterpieces
He based the themes of his allegorical paintings on the Neoplatonist idealism of the Medici. An example is La primavera, a mature work carried out around 1478 for the house of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Médici, a disciple of Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino, in the city of Florence. It is classically inspired. But the characters present the reinterpretation of Renaissance thought.
One of his most famous paintings is The Birth of Venus, (1484) with a mythological theme, which is part of the same series produced for the Medici, together with Spring and Pallas and the Centaur. In this work, Botticelli manages to put an end to the problem of how to distribute the figures. This problem is due to the concept of making the painting a mirror of reality. Botticelli solves it by taking liberties with Nature, to endow the work with beauty and harmony. This is seen in the unnatural size of Venus's neck, in the pronounced drop of her shoulders, and in the strange way in which her left arm hangs from her.Thus, Botticelli's art reaches its fullness with The birth of Venus .
Spring and The Birth of Venus gave Botticelli prestige as an artist. But the most profitable works of his were his madonnas. He obtained great wealth thanks to his work.
Religion
At the end of the 15th century, the Florentine environment changed. Savonarola is the best personification of this change in the environment of the time. This preacher, who in a previous stay had not made an impression on the Florentines, returned to the city in 1490, and this time his tremendous preaching on the Last Judgment was successful due to a series of circumstances, such as the loss of power suffered by the Medici due to the Franco-Italian wars, the spread of syphilis, called "French disease", and the atmosphere of millenarianism as the year 1500 approached. Starting from Florence as the New Jerusalem, Savonarola advocated achieving a humanity without sin, which influenced the Florentine painters. Due to his attacks against paganism, the mythological theme practically disappeared.
In 1492 Lorenzo de' Medici the Magnificent died. King Charles VIII of France invaded Florence in 1494, driving out Pedro de' Medici. Savonarola became the leader of the city, establishing a Republic that abhorred everything that the Medicis represented, such as luxury objects and paintings by Botticelli. Sandro was intensely religious. In these last years of his life, his production is characterized by "restlessness." Giorgio Vasari affirms that Botticelli was a piagnone ('crybaby' or 'loraduelos'), the name by which the followers of Savonarola were designated, and that for it abandoned painting as earthly vanity. Today this statement is highly doubted, considering that he was not a true follower of Savonarola, unlike his brother Simone de él, with whom the painter lived. What can be affirmed is that in Botticelli's latest works the influence of the climate of political and religious crisis is felt.
His work The calumny of Apelles (1495) dates from the height of the Republic, an allegorical painting taken from Luciano in the De Calumnia and mentioned in the treatise from Alberti. The work has been related to Savonarola's preaching. It does not show a composition belonging to the classical model, since it is more characteristic of the medieval past. Apelles' slander shows the current crisis in the Republic of Savonarola. This caused him to change his orientation in which he recreated elements of Gothic expressionism. An example of this is the mystical Nativity. This work is the only one signed and dated by Botticelli. He mentions in the inscription that he was inspired by chapter XI of the Apocalypse. It also shows the change of style that he underwent in the Cestello's Annunciation (1489). Work commissioned by Francesco Guardi. On February 7, 1497, Savonarola and his followers carried out the most famous Bonfire of the Vanities (Falò delle vanità): they gathered objects that represented moral relaxation in order to to burn them in the Plaza de la Señoría. A few of Botticelli's works burned in this bonfire. On May 4 of that same year, the papal army ended the domain of Savonarola, who died on the 23rd at the stake, handed over by a large part of the citizens of Florence. However, the intellectual environment had irretrievably changed.
Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinman investigated the artist's psychological development through his numerous Madonnas. In the "deepening of understanding and expression in the interpretation of Mary's physiognomy," Steinman believes he sees proof of Savonarola's influence on Botticelli. This means that the biographer needed to alter the dates of a series of Virgins to support his theory; specifically, he dates them to dates much later than those traditionally considered. Steinman takes issue with Vasari's claim that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under Savonarola's influence. He believes that the spiritual and emotional Virgins represented by Sandro come directly from the preaching of the Dominican friar.
Vasari attributes to Botticelli a heretical painting of a Gnostic nature commissioned by Matteo Palmieri in a chapel in San Pedro Mayor. It is an error by Vasari, since said painting, now part of the National Gallery in London, is by the artist Botticini, an error by Vasari himself who confused the names of two painters with similar surnames.
Post Recognition
He became the foremost interpreter of Neoplatonism at the time, with his fusion of Christian and pagan themes and his elevation of aestheticism as a transcendental element in art. To shape this new vision of the world, Botticelli opted for grace; that is, the intellectual elegance and exquisite representation of feelings. In these works the influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli's study of Antiquity. But although it can be understood from a pictorial point of view, the themes themselves remain fascinating because of their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these paintings continue to receive scholarly attention, focusing primarily on the poetry and philosophy of the artist's contemporary humanists. The works do not illustrate a particular text; rather, each of them draws on various texts for its meaning. About his beauty, characterized by Vasari as exemplifying "grace" and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm, there can be no doubt. Ruskin (1890) considers that Botticelli is a clear exponent of Christian romanticism.
It is mentioned by Ugolino Verino (1503) in two of his poems that deal with the most illustrious Florentines. Apart from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Giotto and Antonio Pollaiuolo are also mentioned.
He was forgotten for three centuries, or remembered as a second-rate artist, so he had little influence. However, in the mid-19th century, the so-called Pre-Raphaelites recognized his work. He began to gain wide acceptance and was recognized as an exceptional artist; he inferior to Leonardo in depth of feeling, but not in intensity of expression. Some 19th century critics also felt great admiration for the rediscovered Botticelli, such as Walter Pater, who affirms that Botticelli "exceeded the limits of his generation by painting as a visionary", Edward Burne-Jones or Bernard Berenson, among others.
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