(ROME)
]
The “re-animate Greek,” Botticelli, had but to recall, and hardly to
learn, Antiquity, when that “new learning” which was the old came to
Florence; such is Ruskin’s judgment of this painter, of whom others are
not so sure. For example, one might think his sadness—the sadness of his
Venus—to be something rather of the latter civilization than of the
former; another might find the whole spirit that looks askance from the
beautiful eyes of Botticelli’s Saint Johns and his stripling angels to
be wholly mediaeval and Christian. But in the Madonna he has, almost
invariably, the undisturbed look, above expression, which it is
possible, by some effort, to assign to the Greek original, the antique
ancestry, of his mind. This serenity the Madonna shares with the
rejoicing goddess, with the Graces, with all the gay flower-spotted
persons of the “Primavera.” Needless to say, his children are not Greek.
His child-Christ would be more beautiful if Botticelli had not been
obviously bound to the good gossiping parochial fifteenth-century idea
of a fine child, a champion child. It must be what the French call
_plantureux_. To assign to this _physique_ a conscious intelligence, to
make of a full-fed boy, six months old, a kind of theologian, is to
create a little figure of ambiguous aspect and manners. In one group he
points to the open book, in another he seems to teach his mother from
the spread page. Botticelli was a religious man and, according to Mr.
Berenson, “the greatest artist of lineal design that Europe has ever
had.” His double preoccupation had regard, firstly, to the beauty and
dignity of the Mother and the splendid physical condition and wisdom of
the Child, so that his picture should express his devotion and satisfy
that of all who looked at it; and secondly, to the perfection of the
decorative composition. He had few of the group of “feelings” with
which, after five hundred years of life, art, and literature, true and
false, we contemplate a child. It is impossible that the world should
have passed these centuries without learning some new loves amongst many
studies in humanity; and, accordingly, we, having lost much, have gained
that company of emotions which we call our love of nature. It would be
insincere to profess that we find it in Botticelli; his true lovers
prize him for more appropriate, more timely, and more national qualities
of heart and vision. His love of nature in the Bambino brings about that
charming holding-out of the arms, and inexpert caressing, of the Bardi
picture at Berlin, the early Santa Maria Nuova “Madonna and Child with
Angels,” and the “Madonna delle Rose” of the Pitti Palace, to take
typical examples. The last-named is generally judged to be, though
something more than a _quadro di scuola_, not altogether from
Botticelli’s hands. But the Child’s action, if not the drawing, is at
any rate Botticellian; and it assuredly does not come within our present
love of nature. It is not nearer to our sense of childish attitude and
action than are the roses that fill the background of this _tondo_ to
our sense of the character, the growth, the aspect, the stalks, leaves,
thorns, buds, and faces of roses. Here is something different from
convention, which uses the mere suggestions of natural form for rigid
decoration. Botticelli’s roses and golden fruits are not ruled in ranks.
They and his Bambini are the fruits of his love of nature, a love of
nature at arm’s length. It is in some of the angels, and in more than
one Saint John, that the look is more direct; both the beauty and the
expression are immediate, or almost immediate, as close as Botticelli
chose to approach, or perhaps was able to approach. The lovely _tondo_
in our National Gallery has been at different times held to be by the
master, by a pupil working under the master’s direction, and by a
painter merely of the Florentine school of Botticelli’s century.
Whatever hand designed and painted this beautiful group was the hand of
genius. No study of children painted by the Italian masters could pass
over these exquisite heads. They are heads of later childhood, the age
of Saint John the Baptist being decided upon by the painter’s choice.
Historically he would be, as Raphael so often makes him, a companion
infant to our Lord; it is characteristic of the painter of this Madonna
and of other doubtful Botticellian work—for instance, the picture at the
Louvre—to group a Baptist of some twelve years old with the infant
Christ. The three heads have thus a touching difference in their
youthfulness. In the National Gallery picture there are angels of Saint
John’s age, and of equal beauty. The young Baptist is clad in his
camel’s hair and carries his slender cross. In all these lovely faces
there is the Botticellian length; but whereas the undoubted Botticelli
was somewhat fond of an oblong shape, especially, it would seem, when he
aimed at singular beauty, the school-painter has the long form with a
pointed chin. Botticelli in his later years drew the face with a
slightly pointed chin. He and his pupil, if pupil it was, had alike an
ideal eyebrow, arched and far above the eye, implying a huge eye-socket
or orbit, but one filled smoothly with flesh. That space between the
eyebrow and the closure of the eyelid was so dear to the painter in
question that he carried it perhaps beyond the probabilities of anatomy,
certainly beyond experience; in the unquestioned work of Botticelli it
has hardly the look of wistfulness that the school-painter gives it,
allying it with the gaiety of the chin. The Saint John of the Louvre
group, that beautiful boy with sidelong look and folded arms, has the
eyebrows and the chin. So has Botticelli’s own Bambino in the picture at
the Pitti, in which the Child is about to kiss his Mother.
[Illustration:
_Houghton_