izi III: Botticelli

A painter apart--Sandro Filipepi--Artists' names--Piero de' Medici--The
"Adoration of the Magi"--The "Judith" pictures--Lucrezia Tornabuoni,
Lorenzo and Giuliano's mother--The Tournaments--The "Birth of Venus"
and the "Primavera"--Simonetta--A new star--Sacred pictures--Savonarola
and "The Calumny"--The National Gallery--Botticelli's old age and
death.

We come next to the Sala di Botticelli, and such is the position
held by this painter in the affection of visitors to Florence, and
such the wealth of works from his hand that the Uffizi possesses,
that I feel that a single chapter may well be devoted to his genius,
more particularly as many of his pictures were so closely associated
with Piero de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici. We see Botticelli here
at his most varied. The Accademia also is very rich in his work,
having above all the "Primavera," and in this chapter I shall glance
at the Accademia pictures too, returning to them when we reach that
gallery in due course. Among the great Florentine masters Botticelli
stands apart by reason not only of the sensitive wistful delicacy
of his work, but for the profound interest of his personality. He
is not essentially more beautiful than his friend Filippino Lippi
or--occasionally--than Fra Lippo Lippi his master; but he is always
deeper. One feels that he too felt the emotion that his characters
display; he did not merely paint, he thought and suffered. Hence his
work is dramatic. Again Botticelli had far wider sympathies than most
of his contemporaries. He was a friend of the Medici, a neo-Platonist,
a student of theology with the poet Palmieri, an illustrator of Dante,
and a devoted follower of Savonarola. Of the part that women played
in his life we know nothing: in fact we know less of him intimately
than of almost any of the great painters; but this we may guess, that
he was never a happy man. His work falls naturally into divisions
corresponding to his early devotion to Piero de' Medici and his
wife Lucrezia Tornabuoni, in whose house for a while he lived; to
his interest in their sons Lorenzo and Giuliano; and finally to his
belief in Savonarola. Sublime he never is; comforting he never is;
but he is everything else. One can never forget in his presence the
tragedy that attends the too earnest seeker after beauty: not "all
is vanity" does Botticelli say, but "all is transitory".

Botticelli, as we now call him, was the son of Mariano Filipepi