_Sandro Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510).
The family surname of Sandro (Alessandro, or Alexander) was
Filipepi. "He was apprenticed when a lad to a goldsmith, called
Botticello (for he obstinately refused to learn either to
read, write, or sum); of which master we know only that he so
formed this boy that thenceforward the boy thought it right to
be called Botticello's Sandro, and nobody else's (in Italian
Sandro di Botticello, abbreviated into Sandro Botticelli).[203]
Having learned prosperously how to manage gold, he took a
fancy to know how to manage colour, and was put under the
best master in Florence, the Monk Lippi" (see 666). Some
characteristics of Lippi's art--its union of a buoyant spirit
of life and enjoyment with simplicity and tenderness of
religious feeling--are seen in the pupil. But he added in his
turn marked characteristics of his own, which are noticed in
detail under his several pictures here. "Where Fra Filippo was
all repose, Sandro was all movement." Moreover, Botticelli's
range of subject was very wide--embracing Venus crowned with
roses and the Virgin crowned by Christ, the birth of Love (at
Florence), and the birth of the Saviour. Botticelli, says
Ruskin, is "the only painter of Italy who understood the
thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a
measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on
the whole, the most universal of painters; and, take him all in
all, the greatest Florentine workman" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1872,
xxii. 2). He was, we are told, _persona sofistica_, and lived
on terms of intimacy with members of the Florentine Platonic
Academy. The speculations which he shared with the poet Matteo
Palmieri are enshrined in his "Assumption" (No. 1126), painted
about 1475. In 1481 he executed a series of designs for
Landino's edition of Dante: these wonderful drawings, formerly
in the Hamilton Collection, are now at Berlin. "By this time,"
says Ruskin, "he was accounted so good a divine, as well as
painter, that Pope Sixtus IV. sent for him to be master of
the works in his new (Sistine) chapel--where the first thing
my young gentleman does, mind you, is to paint the devil,
in a monk's dress, tempting Christ! The sauciest thing, out
and out, done in the history of the Reformation, it seems to
me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise
shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't
mind; and all went on as merrily as marriage bells." The
history of Moses--the subject of his other fresco in the
Sistine Chapel--"teems with his exuberant power and displays
great grandeur of landscape." In the same chapel are also 28
portraits of Popes by Botticelli. "And having thus obtained
great honour and reputation, and considerable sums of money,
he squandered all the last away. And at this time, Savonarola
beginning to make himself heard, and founding in Florence the
company of the Piagnoni (Mourners or Grumblers, as opposed to
the men of pleasure), Sandro made a Grumbler of himself, being
then some forty years old; fell sadder, wiser, and poorer day
by day; until he became a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de' Medici;
and having gone some time on crutches, being unable to stand
upright, died peacefully" (_Ariadne Florentina_, Lecture VI.;
_Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii. 2-6).
Few things are more curious in the history of taste than the
vicissitudes of Botticelli's fame. In his own day he had been
much esteemed, but his reputation was soon eclipsed. In 1602
a decree was issued by the Grand Duke of Tuscany prohibiting
the inhabitants of Florence from removing important works
of art, for "neither the city nor the land itself is to be
despoiled of the masterpieces of eminent painters." The
schedule of _eccellenti pittori_ contains nineteen names,
among which that of Filippino Lippi, Botticelli's pupil, is
included, but not Botticelli himself.[204] The rediscovery
of Botticelli has fallen to our country and generation. The
influence of Rossetti, the example of Burne-Jones, the famous
essay of Pater, and the enthusiasm of Ruskin, have established
a cult of Botticelli which in earlier generations would have
passed for a mild lunacy.[205] Goldsmith, had he witnessed
it, might have substituted the name of Botticelli for that of
Perugino in his satire on fashionable æstheticism. The poetical
imagination of Botticelli, his inventive design, the strong
sense of life which glows through all his pictures, are truly
admirable. But what lends additional force to his vogue is
the seal of _intimité_ which is set upon his work. Botticelli
treats his themes, says Burton "with a verve, a naïveté, and
pathos peculiar to himself." Besides the very greatest men,
there is (says Pater) "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. Of this select
number Botticelli is one; he has the freshness, the uncertain
and diffident promise which belongs to the earlier Renaissance
itself, and makes 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 other pictures by Botticelli in the National Gallery (see 275,
1126, and 915) adequately represent his earlier phases; this one
completes the story of his life--painted as it was under Savonarola's
influence--
Wrought in the troublous times of Italy
By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear
Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near
To end all labour and all revelry,
He worked and prayed in silence.