subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the _Uffizii_,
of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the
middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its
strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint
conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless
nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by
a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you
have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may
think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and
the colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come
to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour
is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon
them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you
will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that
quaint design of Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper
than the works of the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of
the Greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves,
of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than Botticelli,
or his most learned contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has
taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what
we owe to the Hellenic spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's
you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned
back towards it, in almost painful aspiration, from a world in which
it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the
industry of realization, with which Botticelli carries out his
intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the
human mind of the imaginative system of which this is perhaps the
central subject. The light is indeed cold--mere sunless dawn; but a
later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the
better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory, as
it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their labours until
the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that
the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of
love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across
the gray water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she
sails, the sea "showing his teeth", as it moves, in thin lines of foam,
and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in outline,
plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as Botticelli's
flowers always are. Botticelli meant all this imagery to be altogether
pleasurable, and it was partly an incompleteness of resources,
inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it.
But his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is
unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess
of pleasure, as the depository of a great power over the lives of men.
I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result
of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain
condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a
character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the
shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that
this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains
of the true complexion of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess
of pleasure in other episodes besides that of her birth from the sea,
but never without some shadow of death in the gray flesh and wan
flowers. He paints Madonnas, but they shrink from the pressure of the
divine child, and plead in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower
humanity. The same figure--tradition connects it with Simonetta, the
mistress of Giuliano de' Medici-appears again as Judith, returning
home across the hill country, when the great deed is over, and the
moment of revulsion come, when the olive branch in her hand is becoming
a burthen; as _Justice_, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look
of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide;
and again as _Veritas_, in the allegorical picture of _Calumnia_, where
one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which
identifies the image of Truth with the person of Venus. We might trace
the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in them is
doubtful, and the object of this brief study has been attained if I
have defined aright the temper in which he worked.
But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli--a
secondary painter--a proper subject for general criticism? There are
a few great painters, like Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose work has
become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that
they have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro
Botticelli; and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism,
general criticism may be very well employed in that sort of
interpretation which adjusts the position of these men to general
culture, whereas smaller men can be the proper subjects only of
technical or antiquarian treatment. But, besides those great men, there
is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their
own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which
we cannot get elsewhere; and these, too, have their place in general
culture, and must be interpreted to it by those who have felt their
charm strongly, and are often the object of a special diligence and
a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about
them the stress of a great name and authority. Of this select number
Botticelli is one. He has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident
promise, which belong to the earlier Renaissance itself, and make it
perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind. In
studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in
human culture the art of Italy had been called.
THE END.