A Novel Set in Italy in the Time of Lorenzo De Medici 1478-1480 Pdf, Epub, Ebook
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PALLAS AND THE CENTAUR: A NOVEL SET IN ITALY IN THE TIME OF LORENZO DE MEDICI 1478-1480 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Linda Proud | 510 pages | 01 Dec 2008 | The Godstow Press | 9780954736705 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom Pallas and the Centaur According to the custom of the age, his mother married again immediately and her son became legally an orphan. Although everyone knew it was the fault of custom, it was still common for men to grow up resenting their mothers for having abandoned them. Poliziano was one such. This psychic break with his own mother reflects in all his other relationships with women, and he is torn apart like Orpheus. Against the custom of the time, he strives to recreate his family of brothers and sisters, but he cannot make himself whole until he has forgiven his mother. It is the book of the Renaissance Woman, and she is seen in all her aspects through Poliziano's eyes. There is Lorenzo's mother, whom he adores for her intelligence and wisdom; Lorenzo's wife, whom he abhors for her dogmatic piety and illiteracy; his sister, who enchants him with her eccentric desire to be just like him; Cassandra Fidelis, a learned woman who frightens him; and the Virgin Mary herself, whose image torments him with its ideal of perfect motherhood. Woman twists and turns before the eyes of this confused and unhappy man, until he learns to see her true nature. Lorenzo de' Medici, whose brother was murdered by the Pazzi, has no doubt that he has God on his side. His wife, Clarice, is not so sure. Roman-born and pious she is in every way a medieval woman and believes that the troubles besetting the family are due to Lorenzo's 'heresy', that is, his Platonism. Lorenzo sends her to safety, under the protection of Angelo Poliziano. Powerless against her husband, Clarice sets out to destroy the poet. The domestic conflicts reflect - in fact, are intimately connected with - world affairs. As Lorenzo's marriage falls apart, so does his hold on the power- politics of Florence and Italy. Events move to dramatic conclusions that explode each character's beliefs and certainties. The war is not just between Florence and Rome but is a battle between the medieval world and the Renaissance, between superstitious Christianity and Christian Platonism, between faith and reason, between a woman and a man. It is the battle of Juno and Zeus. Through their lips we hear the words of neoplatonism, and through their eyes we see the art of the Renaissance, especially that of Botticelli, as it was being painted. The pen- drawings of the two masters show a still more remarkable similarity, and, as Mr. Michael and St. Bernard in adoration of the Child, which is preserved in the archives of Florence. This sketch belongs to a letter addressed by the master to Giovanni dei Medici, who had ordered him to paint a Madonna which he might present to Alfonso, King of Naples, in the year , and is one of the very few drawings still in existence by this artist. The series of frescoes in the choir of the Pieve, upon which Fra Filippo had been engaged at intervals during the last thirteen years, was at length completed in , but the painter remained at Prato during the next two years to recruit himself after his arduous labours, and to execute various private commissions which he had undertaken. The most important of these was an altar-piece of the Presentation for the ' "The Drawings of Florentine Painters," by Bernhard Berenson, vol. Immedi- ately after this he set out for Spoleto, taking with him his little son, Filippino, and his chief assistant, Fra Diamante, to' paint the choir of the Cathedral, at the invitation of the magistrates of that city. Sandro did not accompany his master on this last journey. But the choirs of angels, singing and dancing on the meadows of Paradise, swinging censers in the air, or scattering roses at the feet of the blessed, which form so prominent a feature of Fra Filippo's Coronation of the Virgin in the cupola of the Spoleto Duomo, bear a striking resemblance to Botticelli's own creations and seem to indicate that he had a share in this latest phase of his master's art. The invitation of the Commune had reached the Friar through his illustrious patron Cosimo dei Medici in , and during the interval which elapsed between the completion of the Pieve frescoes and Lippi's departure for Spoleto, Sandro may well have assisted his master in preparing cartoons for this important work. It is also highly probable that Botticelli visited Spoleto on his way to Rome in 1, which would account for his familiarity with Fra Filippo's last works. In any case Sandro did not forget the debt that he owed to his old master, and when, after the Friar's sudden death in October, , his assistant, Fra Diamante, brought his young son, Filippino, back to Florence, the lad entered Botticelli's workshop and grew up in the charge of his father's most distinguished pupil. THE dark choir of the ancient church at Prato, with its sorely- injured but still beautiful and animated frescoes by the Carmelite painter, was, we have seen, the true school in which Sandro Botticelli received his artistic training-, and the dreamy, impressionable youth first woke to a sense of his own genius. From this school he emerged an independent master when, on Era Filippo's departure for Spoleto, he returned to settle in his old home at Florence. But not a single specimen of his work at this period was known to be in existence until, a few years ago, Mr. Herbert Home and Mr. Berenson discovered a damaged fresco of the Vii'gin and Child in the little oratory known as the Madonna della Vannella on the hillside near the village of Set- tignano. This painting originally adorned a wayside shrine in honour of Our Lady, whose kindly influence the Tuscan peasants invoked to shield from hail and tempest the vineyards and orchards on the hillside leading over the valley towards Fiesole. The Madonna is represented seated in a marble niche looking down on the Child, who stands on her knee and reaches out his little arms towards his mother. The form and action of the Child and the expression of his face strongly resemble Era Filippo's babies, especially the infant of the Munich picture, but the drooping head of the Virgin and the gentle melancholy of her face are already characteristic of Botticelli. Another work of his which was probably executed two or three years later, about or , is the long narrow panel of the Adoration of the Magi in the Na- tional Gallery No. This pic- ture still bears the name of Filippino Lippi in the Catalogue, but Morelli and all the best critics have long re- cognized it as an early work of his master, Botticelli. Here the youth- ful-looking Virgin and Child are quite in Fra Filippo's style, and might almost be taken for his work, but the animated throng of attendants and spectators betray the scholar's hand, while the group of pages and serv- ants leading horses in the Magi's train, at the opposite end of the pic- ture, reveal the presence of another influence, and show us that the friar's pupil had found a new teacher. This was none other than Antonio Pol- laiuolo, the goldsmith painter, who at that time stood at the head of the Naturalist school in Florence. The pupil of Andrea del Castagno and the heir of the great traditions which Donatello and Paolo Uccello had left behind them, this distinguished artist was the foremost representative of the scientific movement which had already taken so strong a hold on the Florentine painters of the fifteenth century. The flourishing bottcga, which he and his brother Piero held in the Vacchereccia or Cow-market, was a centre for technical research and anatomical studies. Home, Esg. And he was so great a draughtsman that not only all the goldsmiths worked from his designs, but that many of the best sculptors and painters were glad to make use of them, and by this means attained the highest honour. And it would be hard to over-estimate the importance of his teaching and example on the art of Botticelli. Without this period of close association with the goldsmith- painter his style would never have gained its force and virility. He would never have attained the power to represent action and movement, which is so marked a feature of his art; above all he would never have been able to give full expression to the deepest and innermost feelings of his soul. Up to this period of his career, Sandro's artistic training had been conducted on wholly different lines. Both Filippo's teaching and his own temperament led him in an entirely opposite direction from the scientific naturalism which lay at the root of Pollaiuolo's methods. He had grown up in the Gothic traditions of the Giottesque masters of the fourteenth century, which the Carmelite painter had inherited from Lorenzo Monaco, from Masoino and Fra Angelico. And the ideal and poetic bent of his own imagination led him to strive above all for beauty of colouring, for grace of form and charm and sincerity of expression in his art. Uffizi Florence. THE FORTEZZA Now in the busy workshop of the Pollaiuoli brothers, in the heart of Florence, he found himself in an altogether new atmosphere, where questions of anatomy and foreshortening, the correct drawing of the nude and the accurate representation of movement, were the problems which absorbed the artist's thoughts and occupied his whole energy.