A Novel Set in Italy in the Time of Lorenzo De Medici 1478-1480 Pdf, Epub, Ebook

PALLAS AND THE CENTAUR: A NOVEL SET IN ITALY IN THE TIME OF LORENZO DE MEDICI 1478-1480 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

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 picture still bears the name of Filippino Lippi in the Catalogue, but Morelli and all the best critics have long recognized it as an early work of his master, Botticelli. Here the youthful-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 picture, 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. Yet such was the commanding personality of the master, such the quick sympathy and receptivity of the scholar, that Sandro's art for the moment underwent a transformation. Fra Filippo's pupil caught the enthusiasm for scientific research that was in the air about him, and became for the time being a naturalist. The Fortezza, which he painted while he worked as an assistant in the shop of the Pollaiuoli brothers, is the best proof of the completeness with which Sandro learnt his new lessons. This noble figure was executed about the year , as a companion to the six Virtues already completed by Antonio and Piero Pol- laiuolo for the decoration of the Tribunal of Commerce. The writer evidently derived his information in this instance from a much earlier document, "Memoriale" of the priest Francesco Albertini. In the account of ''the statues and pictures, worthy of being remembered, in this our illustrious city of Florence," which this learned Canon of S. Lorenzo drew up for his friend the sculptor Baccio di Montelupo, and printed in August, 1 5 10, he gives a full description of the contents of the Palazzo Pubblico, and adds the following note: " I have not mentioned the six figures of the Virtues which are in the Arte della Mercantia by the hand of Pietro Pollaiuolo. The seventh is by Sandro. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the figure in question was painted by Sandro, although in this instance he followed the pattern set before him so closely that even Morelli would not accept the panel as his work. This tall slender maiden, wearing a breast-plate and corslet of steel and throned in a marble niche, is executed in the same pale colouring and sculptural style as the six companion Virtues that were painted by Piero Pollaiuolo, in all probability from his more illustrious brother's designs. The embroideries of her red robes and the coloured marbles of her throne are the same, and show how literally he copied his master's model. But in the arrangement of the draperies we see the touch of another hand, while the attitude of the figure and expression of the face are altogether Sandro's own. The drooping head and long nervous fingers clasping the mace that rests on her lap. The patient and weary but still resolute air all help to give that expression of restraint, of brave and steadfast endurance, which makes Botticelli's Fortitude unlike that of any other painter. Let us hear once more what Ruskin said of her long ago in an eloquent passage in his " Mornings in Florence": " What is chiefly notable in her is — that you would not, if you had to guess who she was, take her for Fortitude at all. Every- body else's Fortitudes announce themselves clearly and proudly. They have tower-like shields and lion-like helmets — and stand firm astride on their legs— and are confidently ready for all comers. Yes; that is your common Fortitude. Very grand, though common. But not the highest by any means. Ready for all comers, and a match for them, stands the universal Fortitude; — no thanks to her for standing so steady, then! But Botticelli's Fortitude is no match, it may be, for any that are coming. Worn somewhat, and not a little weary, instead of standing ready for all comers, she is sitting — apparently in reverie, her fingers playing restlessly and idly — nay, I think — even nervously, about the hilt of her sword. For her battle is not to begin to-day; nor did it begin yesterday. Many a morn and even have passed since it began; and now — is this to be the ending day of it? And if this — by what manner of end? That is what Sandro's Fortitude is thinking, and the playing fingers about the sword-hilt would fain let it fall, if it might be: and yet 20 JUDITH how sw'ftly and gladly will they close on it, when the far-off trumpet blows, which she will hear throug-h all her reverie! The same fine imag-inative conception marks the other pictures which he painted at this period of his career. Foremost among these are the two small panels on the story of Judith and Holofernes, which are now in the Uffizi Gallery. These little panels are mentioned by Raffaelle Borghini in his " Riposo," a work written early in the eighteenth century, and described in the following words: " Two little pictures: in one of which Holofernes is represented, lying in bed with his head cut off, and his barons standing around in amazement, and in the other Judith with the head in a sack. These belonged not long ago to M. Ridolfo Siri- gatti, and he gave them to the most Serene lady Bianca Capello dei Medici, our Grand Duchess, hearing that Her Highness wished to adorn a writing cabinet with pictures and antique statues, and judging this little work of Botticelli worthy of a place there. In spite of modern repainting, and clumsy restoration, they bear the unmistakable stamp of Sandro's brain and hand, and were evidently executed at a time when he was still strongly influenced by the Polla- iuoli and probably working in their shop. Here Botticelli comes before us for the first time as the narrator of an historical incident, and tells his story with dramatic vividness and energy, together with that touch of poetry and spiritual feeling which are never absent from his creations. The Return of Judith No. We see Judith, clad in rich apparel, or, as the sacred text describes, "in her garments of glad- ness," bravely decked with bracelets and chains and ornaments, return- ing from the camp of the Assyrians across the mountains to Bethulia, strong in the might of the great deliverance that she has wrought for Israel. Borghini, vol. In the valley below, on the banks of a broad river, we see the walls and gates of the city and the groups of armed horsemen riding out to meet her. The figure of Judith bears a strong likeness to the Fortesza. She has the same long neck, high cheek bones, and peculiar type of feature. Her eyes have the same wistful look; her countenance wears the same expression of gentle sadness, and forms a striking contrast to the eager, intent air of her serving-maid, whose gaze is fixed in silent devotion on the mistress for whose sake she has dared to meet danger and death. He has also repamted most of the landscape and part of the draperies without, however, de- stroying the charm of the colour — the delicate mauve tints of Judith's robe and the orange hues of her maid's coarser skirts. But the most striking thing in the group is the new sense of life and movement that is everywhere perceptible — the quick, gliding step of Judith herself, the breeze that stirs the folds of her garments and catches her servant's veil and the sack that rests on her head. The second subject, that of H olofernes lying dead in his Tent No. Here the headless corpse of the murdered warrior is seen on the couch in his tent, with the curtains drawn back and the Assyrian captains and soldiers looking, with consternation on their faces, at the horrible sight. The scene in all its ghastly details is painted with dramatic truth and power, and the pitying expression on the face of the servant who stands on the right, holding his master's sword and gazin;g on the dead form lying there, is admirably rendered. The horse with its splendid trappings and arched neck in the background, and the riich costumes and armour of the warriors are cleverly imitated from thee work of the goldsmith-painters, and in the glimpse of distant trees a nd fields, seen under the uplifted curtains of the tent, we have one of those picturesque touches revealing that instinctive love of beauty which no amount of naturalistic teaching could destroy. In connection with Botticelli's panels of Judith and Holofernes, we must not fail to mention the interesting announce- ment that has been lately made by S ignor Gustavo Frizzoni, the well- known art-critic and distinguished follower of Morelli. This eminent connoisseur has recently discovered a third panel on the Story of Judith, in which he recognizes the lhand of Botticelli. The Jewish heroine is represented issuing from the tent of Holofernes, bearing her sword in one hand and the head of her victim in the other. Her parted lips seem to utter a song of triumph to the God who has given her the victory, and the freedom and grace of her movement recalls tlhe figure of Sandro's Primavera. This picture, in Signor Frizzoni's opinion, belongs to the painter's riper years, and was painted at a ttime when he had acquired full mastery over technique and composition. The martyrdom of St. Sebastian was another subject which, like the heroic deed of Judith, had an especial attraction for the Florentines of those days. The most famous example of the subject is the large altar-piece which Antonio Pollaiuolo himself executed in , for the Chapel of the Pucci family in the Church of the Annunziata, and which was bought by the trustees of the National Gallery in the year , from the representative of that noble family, the Marchese Pucci of Florence. We know how eloquent Vasari waxes in his description of the marvellous way in which the painter succeeded in imitating nature in his representation of the archer drawing his bow; "you see the veins and muscles swelling and the breath being held back! This panel, the " Anonimo " tells us, was completed by Sandro in January, ; and Vasari further informs us that a San Scbastiano was among the most remarkable of the works which Botti- celli painted for Lorenzo dei Medici. Sandro' may have seen Antonio's cartoon for the Pucci St. This picture so far resembles Pollaiuolo's masterpiece, that the figure of the saint is represented of the size of life, bound to the trunk of a tree, and the modelling was sufficiently in Antonio's style for the picture to be ascribed to that painter during many years by the Directors of the Berlin Gallery. If in the glad and joyous movement of Judith Botticelli had shown his power of representing action, in this Sebastian he proved that he could equally well delineate the figure in repose. The romantic expression of this youthful martyr with the regular features and clusters of curls round his brow, is heightened by the poetic charm of the landscape background, with its steep cliffs and lofty towers on the shores of a distant sea. This landscape was to be repeated with slight variations in many other fifteenth-century pictures, and was to serve as a model for more than one of San- dro's contemporaries in the days to come. Closely akin to these works is the beautiful early Madonna which Morelli discovered in a forgotten corner on the ground-floor of Prince Chigi's palace in Rome. Since then, its sale and removal from Italy has been the subject of a notorious lawsuit, and the picture is now the property of Mrs. Gardner of Boston, in the United States. Before its departure for America, the panel underwent a thorough and judicious cleaning, which brought fresh beauties to light and displayed its admirable preservation. This of itself would suffice to heighten its value and make it doubly rare among Botticelli's paintings. But there is a youthful charm and naivete about this little work, a delicacy 25 E By pcrinisiion of Messrs. The composition is altogether original and reveals the thoughtful and spiritual cast of Sandro's imagination even in those early days. A boy-angel robed in green, with a wreath of bay-leaves on his fair locks, is in the act of presenting a bunch of purple grapes and ears of wheat to the Child, who rests on his mother s knee. The Virgin looks down pensively as she plucks one of the ripe ears of corn, and muses thoughtfully over those symbols of the Eucharist, while the Child in her arms lifts his little hand in blessing. Already the shadow of coming agony, some dim foreboding of the Cross and Passion, is clouding her soul with sadness, and the mysterious smile on the angel's face bids us see in this offering a prophetic type of the bread and wine of the Great Sacrifice. The attitude of the Madonna, seated before the open casement with her plump, rosy babe in her arms, the soft rose and pale blue tints of her draperies, the transparent veil on her rippling hair, and the charming glimpse of wooded hills and winding stream through the window, all recall Fra Filippo's style, and show us that Sandro had forgotten none of his first master's lessons. But, on the other hand, in his attempt to obtain structural completeness, in the fine modelling of the forms, and especially that of the angel's face, Botticelli shows how great was the progress which he had made since he left Fra Filippo's shop, and comes nearer to Pollaiuolo than in any other of his works. His technical proficiency, it must be confessed, is still incomplete; there are marked defects of drawing in the Virgin's hands, which are, as is often the case in Sandro's pictures, decidedly too large and out of proportion with the rest of the figure. But in spite of these obvious faults, the Chigi Madonna remains one of the most interesting of Botticelli's early works, and deserves to rank among the most typical and fascinating creations of Florentine painters in the fifteenth century. Maria Nuova. HE two chief tendencies which marked the course of Florentine V. Yet a third influence, according to some critics, is to be traced in Botticelli's early works — that of Andrea del Verrocchio, the contemporary and in some respects the rival of the Pollaiuoli. Like Antonio and Piero, Andrea was a goldsmith and sculptor in the first place, and only a painter in the second place, and, like his great scholar Leonardo, he was a diligent student of geometry and mathematics as well as an accomplished musician. An assistant of Donatello in his boyhood, he succeeded the famous sculptor in the favour of the Medici and was employed to execute the tombs of Giovanni and Piero dei Medici, while Sandro was painting his Fortezsa and working in the bottega of the Pollaiuoli. So vigorous a personality may well have exerted some influence on the impressionable young artist, but we cannot think there is any reason to suppose that Botticelli was as intimately associated with Verrocchio as some German critics have declared. But although Professor Steinmann and several English-Italian writers, including Signor Supino, have adopted this theory, and recognize Andrea's types in the faces of Botticelli's Madonnas and children, their contention can hardly be maintained. For the very pictures in which Dr. Ulmann and his followers see the broad forehead, heavy eyelids, strongly arched eye- brows, wide nostrils and full lips of Verrocchio's Virgins, and the blunt, unrefined forms of his babies, are those which a more careful and searching criticism has pronounced to be unworthy of Sandro's hand. Bode, was rejected by Morelli, who pointed out that the body of the Child was weak in modelling, and that the form of the hand and ear were unlike those of the master, while both in expression and movement, the figures were too devoid of life to be the work of Sandro. Ulmann and Professor Steinmann bring forward as proofs that at this period of his life Sandro followed Verrocchio unreservedly, are generally recognized as being inferior in style and quality to the other early works that we possess from his hand. In an able essay which has been lately republished, Mr. Berenson has convincingly shown that both of these Madonnas which so clearly " betray the hand of the imitator rather than that of the inventor of a style," are the work of a pupil of Botticelli's to whom he has given the name of Amico di Sandro. But although there is no reason to think that Botticelli was ever one of Andrea's assistants, he was no doubt familiar with the great master's works. Verrocchio's bottega, which was one of the largest 28 LEONARDO and most active in Florence, stood in the Cow-market, close to that of the Pollaiuoli, and Sandro and his comrades were doubtless intimately acquainted with all that was passing- in the rival workshop. They knew the commissions which Messer Andrea received from wealthy patrons, and heard of each new picture or bronze which was executed under his direction, especially when, as in the case of the silver reliefs for the retable of the Baptistery, he was employed on the same works as Antonio Pollaiuolo. This was Leonardo da Vinci, the son of the well-known notary Ser Piero, who had been apprenticed to Verrocchio about the time that Botticelli left Fra Filippo's service and returned to Florence. In the year , Leonardo was admitted into the Guild of Painters, but he remained with Andrea several years longer, and was still working under him in the month of June, Although eight years younger than Sandro, Verrocchio's pupil already gave signs of the surprising genius that was to make him supreme among Florentine masters, and both his personal charm and his literary and musical tastes must have appealed in an especial manner to the future painter of the Primavera and illustrator of Dante. The grace and refinement of his creations, the infinite variety and depth of his thoughts, could not fail to excite Sandro's interest. And the two young painters had one great aim in common and believed, as Leonardo notes in his "Trattato " that a good painter's chief object was to represent not only bodily forms but the thoughts of man's heart. Many were the discussions which the two friends had over the problems of perspective and technique which were occupy- ing the thoughts of the men of that generation. The mention of Botticelli in this connection recalls a passage in the writings of Fra Luca Pacioli, in which he speaks of our painter as one of the few living artists who was thoroughly familiar with the science of perspective. In his treatise " Summa De Arithmetica e Geometria," published at Venice in , this Umbrian friar, who was so intimately associated with Leonardo during his long residence at Milan, after speaking of his illustrious fellow- countryman, Piero dei Franceschi, as the foremost master of perspective then living, goes on to mention other distinguished painters who have "often held colloquies on this subject. It is to be found in the " Trattato della Pittura," and is the more remarkable since Sandro is the only painter whose name is mentioned in the course of the treatise. This time the writer recalls some occasion on which Botticelli had spoken disparagingly of the study of landscape as a secondary thing, which could easily be acquired, and was unworthy of serious effort on the painter's part. We can only suppose that Sandro must have dropped this contemptuous remark when his thoughts were intent on some great theme, or some failure to realize his conception had plunged him into a fit of despondency. For instance, if a man does not care for landscapes, he will count landscape-painting to be a short and simple process, as our Botticelli, who said that this study was vain, because by throwing a sponge full of different colours against a wall, you would leave a stain on that wall which would have the effect of a fine landscape. However different their aims and methods were, they were alike in their constant endeavour to attain ideal beauty and to give expression to the inner life of the soul. There can be little doubt that they influenced each other mutually, although the precise nature and degree of that influence is a problem that still remains to be solved. In his biography of Leonardo, the late M. Miintz has entered fully into the subject and pointed out several important motives which he considers Botticelli to have borrowed from his friend, to which we shall refer later. But certain characteristics of Sandro's early works undoubtedly bear a strong likeness to the style of Leonardo. The expressive features of his St. Sebas- tian, and of the angel with the strange smile in the Chigi Madonna, their thick clusters of curly locks, recall alike the heads of Leonardo and of his master Verrocchio, and would be pronounced by German critics to afford additional proof that Sandro worked at one time in Andrea's shop. This at least we may safely assert. A close communion of spirit bound the two artists together at this period of their career, and the evident efforts which Sandro was already making to express the finer and more subtle shades of feeling in his art, may have been in a measure due to his intercourse with Leonardo. He brought with him Filippino, the Friar's little son by the nun Lucrezia Buti, and placed the boy in the charge of Sandro Botticelli to learn the art of painting, as his father had desired. By this time Sandro was evidently an independent master, with a workshop of his own, and in the following year his merit, as we have seen, was sufficient to attract the notice of Lorenzo dei Medici. His reputation soon spread beyond the walls of his native city, and a few months after he had completed his picture of St. Sebastian, he received an invitation from the Directors of the Duomo works at Pisa, who were desirous to see the decoration of the Campo Santo in that city completed without further delay. During the last six years, another Florentine master had been engaged in continuing the work begun in the previous century by Tuscan artists. This was Benozzo Gozzoli, who had also long enjoyed the favour of the Medici, and had recently decorated the chapel of their palace with his famous frescoes of the Procession of the Magi. But whether the Pisan magnates were not altogether satisfied with Benozzo's work, or whether they were anxious for the more speedy accomplish- ment of this great task, they invited Botticelli to Pisa, in order to judge for themselves if his powers were equal to so important an undertaking. Accordingly, in May, , he paid a short visit to Pisa and received a florin for the expenses of his journey from the Superintendent of the Duomo works. The result of this first interview was that Sandro agreed to paint a picture of the Assumption for the Chapel of the Incoronata in the Cathedral, on condition that, if the work met with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities, he would be employed to paint the same subject on the walls of the Campo Santo. In July Sandro returned to Pisa and began to execute this honour- able commission. During the next three months the archives of the Cathedral Chapter contain frequent entries of supplies of corn given to Sandro, surnamed Botticelli, as well as of payments of money for the purchase of ultramarine, which he had procured from Florence. In all probability he was glad to return to Florence, where his reputation was already secured, and where a series of new and important works was awaiting him. Soon after his return he may have executed the large tondo of the Adoration of the Magi, which is now in the National Gallery. The subject had become popular in Florence ever since, in , Gentile da Fabriano, theUmbrian master, "whose hand," Michelangelo said, "was as gentle as his name," painted his great Adoration by order of Palla Strozzi, for the monks of Vallombrosa. Gentile had treated the old Chris- tian story after the fashion of a mediaeval romance, surrounding it with all the pomp and splendour of those pageants that were so dear to the Florentine heart. He had borrowed motives from the Court life of the day, and introduced a gay troop of knights and pages, dogs and horses in the festal train. His example had been quickly followed by other artists, and Benozzo Gozzoli, in particular, had set forth the procession of the Three Kings in the most sumptuous style on the walls of the Medici Chapel. Sandro's own master, Fra Filippo, had been one of the first to adopt these fashionable motives. In one of his earliest works, the tondo in Sir Frederick Cook's collection at Richmond, the Carmelite friar introduced a vast number of richly-attired personages, with horses and dogs, into the scene, and at the same time cleverly arranged his composition to suit the circular form of his picture. This shape, which was to become so popular among Florentine artists in the latter part of the century, had hitherto been chiefly employed by sculptors, and was commonly used for bas-reliefs by Donatello and Luca della Robbia, but until this time had never, as far as we know, been adopted in painting. Botticelli's love for this subject was still greater than that of his contemporaries, if we are to judge from the frequency with which he painted it. Many are the versions which he has left us of this his favourite story, executed with the most different intentions and placed in the midst of the most varied surroundings. Sometimes he lays the scene in a rocky wilderness, sometimes in the heart of a pine-forest. In some cases he ' L. In the Ufhzi altar-piece the legend of the Three Kings becomes an apotheosis of the house of Medici; in a later work it affords Sandro an opportunity for celebrating Savonarola's dream of a New Jerusalem on earth. Last of all, we see it transformed into a mystic vision of the Celestial Country, where bright-hued seraphs sing their glad carols and dance hand hand-in-hand on the clouds of heaven, and angels welcome martyred saints to their embraces. Two at least of these manifold versions of the subject belong to the early days, when the influence of the Pollaiuoli was still the predominant feature of his art. The first was, as we have seen, the long panel in the National Gallery No. The second, which now belongs to the same collection, was evidently executed a few years later, and probably only finished after Sandro's return from Pisa in Like the earlier panel, this Adoration is still ascribed in the official catalogue to Filippino Lippi, and Dr. Richter is of opinion that it was the work of a follower of Botticelli rather than of the painter himself. But both Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who noticed the picture while it was still in the FuUer-Maitland collection, and the best Italian authorities, Morelli and Signor Frizzoni, as well as Dr. Ulmann and Mr. Beren- son, have all declared it to be by the hand of Botticelli, and there seems no reason to doubt the attribution. This may indeed be the identical tondo of the Epiphany which Vasari saw in the house of the Pucci, that illustrious family which was so closely connected with the house of Medici, and Botticelli's work may have been ordered by the same Antonio Pucci who gave Antonio Pollaiuolo the commission for his great St. Here Sandro, following his master's example, for the first time adopts the circular form, which he was afterwards to use with such excellent effect in some of his most popular compositions. As yet, however, he had not attained sufficient mastery to deal with this vast number of figures, and the general effect is somewhat confused and over-crowded. The Virgin and Child, St. Other decorative details and homely incidents recall the genre painting of Fra Filippo and his school, and the crowded compositions of Benozzo Gozzoli. The long-tailed peacock perched on the marble column, the dog sitting upon his haunches by his master's side, as well as the trumpeters and buildings in the background, seem to have been directly taken from the frescoes in the Campo Santo of Pisa, where Botticelli had lately seen Benozzo at work. But Sandro's individuality breaks out, as is commonly the case, in many of the types and attitudes which he employs, and notably in the two figures in the left-hand corner of the tondo, which bear a marked resemblance to a similar group in the more famous Adoration which he painted a year or two later for the church of Santa Maria Novella. Before we go on to speak of this altar- piece, however, we must record a fresh commission which Sandro received from another quarter which was to bring him into close connection with the Medici and to lead to new and important developments in his career. HEN Sandro Botticelli first opened a workshop and entered on V V his career as an independent master, a new and brilliant era was dawning- for his native city of Florence. Under the rule of Cosimo dei Medici and his son, Piero il Gottoso, both art and learning had received the most liberal encourag-ement. Never before had there been a time when public buildings, churches and palaces, were raised and decorated on so large and splendid a scale, never were scholars and artists so generously patronized and so highly honoured as in these days. The members of this illustrious house not only lavished their wealth on monumental buildings and works of art, but took a keen personal interest in the men whom they employed. Even Era Eilippo's freaks and follies only provoked a smile from this indulgent patron, who took the lively Carmelite friar under his especial protection, and when those about him urged that the painter's delinquencies should be punished, replied that men of his marvellous genius were angels of light and must not be treated like beasts of burden! He did not live for himself alone, but for the service of God and his country. Cosimo's elder son, Piero, shared his father's refined tastes, and in spite of continual ill-health, took keen interest in the artists whom he employed. From his favourite villa of Careggi, where he was constantly confined to his couch by acute rheumatic gout, he addressed letters to the painters who were at work in the Medici Palace and personally superintended the decoration of the chapel and halls. The kindliness of his nature and the affection which he inspired in the artists who were in his service is shown by the letters of such men as Benozzo Gozzoli or Domenico Veneziano, who address Piero as their dearest friend — Amico mio singularissimo — and make the most anxious inquiries after his health. But Piero only survived his father five years, and both his own sufferings and political troubles both at home and abroad interfered with many of his artistic schemes. He died on the 3rd of September, , at the age of fifty-three, and his elder son Lorenzo succeeded with general consent to the position which his father and grandfather had occupied at the head of the State. At this time Lorenzo, who had been born on the ist of January, , was just twenty-one, and had already given signs of the talents and wisdom which made his future career so remarkable. Under the care of his able and accomplished mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, both he and his younger brother Giuliano had received an excellent education and had been trained by the foremost scholars in all the learning of the day. Gentile Becchi of Urbino, the eminent Latinist, Marsilio Ficino, the great philosopher and translator of Plato, and Cristoforo Landino, the learned commentator of Virgil, and Dante were his principal teachers. At the same time, Lorenzo's keen sense of natural enjoyment made him take delight in pleasures and sports of every description, in music and dancing, in hunting and all knightly exercises. The tournament which was held on the piazza in front of Santa Croce at the Carnival of , a few months before Lorenzo's marriage to Clarice Orsini, was the most brilliant spectacle which had been seen in Florence for many a long day. On that occasion the young Medici rode into the lists in a gorgeous suit of red and white silk mounted on a horse given him by King Ferrante of Naples, with red and white velvet trappings embroidered with pearls. The silken scarf across his breast was embroidered with his device, Le temps revient, wreathed in fresh and withered roses. I find that it cost about 10, gold ducats. Although I was not very strong or skilled in jousting, the first prize was awarded to me, a helmet inlaid with silver and adorned by a figure of Mars. During the last years of his father's life he took a prominent part in the management of public business, and displayed a prudence and capacity which fitted him to assume the independent control of the State. All eyes were now turned to him as the natural successor to the exalted but unolficial post which Cosimo and Piero had held during the last thirty-five years. Lorenzo himself has described the offer which was made him by the leading citizens of Florence in a passage in his memoir, which is of interest: " On the second day after my father's death the most distinguished officers of the State and the chiefs of the ruling party came to our house to express their sorrow for our loss and to request me to undertake the administration of the government of the city as my father and grandfather had done till now. This proposal seeming contrary to my natural instincts — for I was then only twenty-one — and entailing much labour and danger, I accepted it very unwillingly, and only for the sake of protecting our friends and fortunes, since in Florence it is difficult to 38 IL MAGNIFICO possess wealth without retaining" political influence. He was convinced that his sway was necessary for the good of the State, and neglected no means of strengthening his position. From the moment that he took up the reins of government he determined to surround himself with a splendid court, and showed himself a generous and enlightened patron of art and letters. Marsilio Ficino and the older humanists who had enjoyed Cosimo's favour were invited to hold meetings of their Academy in the palace of the Via Larga, and celebrated Plato's birthday in the gardens of the Medici villa at Careggi, while the younger scholars and poets were attracted to Florence by a patron whose love of antiquity was as genuine as their own, and who himself wrote Latin verses worthy to rank with their best productions. Niccolo Valori, one of his contemporaries, describes the great rejoicing with which Lorenzo received the newly-discovered bust of Plato that was sent him by Girolamo Roscio, and tells us how, when he was oppressed with the burden of public affairs, the contemplation of some noble Greek marble would suffice to restore his serenity of mind. When he went to Rome in 1, to assist at the coronation of Pope Sixtus IV, the most memor- able thing recorded in his memoir is that he brought back with him two marble busts of Augustus and Agrippa with which the Pope presented him, as well as a chalcedony cup and a number of medals and cameos which he had purchased there. So fine was his taste in these matters and so passionate his love for Greek and Roman art, that at the time of his death the collection of antique marbles and gems in the Medici Palace and in the Casino and gardens of San Marco was the finest in the world. Architects and sculptors, painters and goldsmiths, alike found in the Magnifico a splendid and generous patron who had inherited the grand traditions of his ancestors, and grudged no expenditure on public monuments and works of art. But I do not regret this expenditure, although many persons think that we should have done better to have kept part of this money in our own purses, for I consider the money to have been well spent, since it has helped to promote great public objects. Scholars and painters in all parts of Italy begged him to honour them with commissions or to help them in bad times and difficult moments. We find Andrea Mantegna writing from the court of the Gonzagas at Mantua to place his services at the Magnifico Lorenzo's disposal, and at the same time beg for a trifling gratuity to enable him to build a new house for himself and his family. His advice on artistic questions was eagerly sought after by other princes. Both as the favourite pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi, that spoilt child of the Medici, whose talents had been held in such high esteem by Cosimo and his sons, and as the skilled assistant 40 GIULIANO of Antonio Pollaiuolo, who was so constantly employed by three generations of the house of Medici, Sandro needed no introduction to Lorenzo's notice. Already, towards the close of , the master had, as we have seen, received an order to paint a St. Sebastian for this august patron. In the following year, after he had returned from his unsuccessful visit to Pisa, he received a new commission from the Magnifico's brother, Giuliano dei Medici. The second son of Piero was four years younger than Lorenzo, and was endowed with those personal attractions which his elder brother lacked. Tall and handsome, active and muscular, he excelled in all knightly exercises, in riding and wrestling, throwing the spear and tilting. While Lorenzo was decidedly plain with weak eyes, a broad nose, large mouth and sallow complexion, Giuliano's fine black eyes, curling dark hair, olive skin, and animated expression gave him a dis- tinctly attractive and picturesque appearance. Although inferior to Lorenzo in ability and intellect, he inherited the refined taste of his family, was fond of music and painting, and wrote poetry which Poliziano describes as full of thought and feeling. From his boyhood Giuliano had been the darling of the people, and his reckless courage in the chase or tournament, his gay manners and courteous bearing made him a favourite with all classes. Poliziano and Machiavelli both tell us that he was the idol of the Florentines, and Paolo Giovio speaks of him as the prince and leader of the gilded youth of his day. But he was always loyal and affectionate to Lorenzo, and no shadow of jealousy or suspicion ever seems to have clouded the excellent understanding that existed between the brothers. While the elder of the two devoted his time and attention to the management of public affairs, the younger hunted and jousted and wrote verses in praise of fair ladies, and took a leading part in those pageants and amusements which delighted the eyes of Florence. As Lorenzo's Tournament had been given in fulfilment of a promise which he made to the beautiful Lucrezia Donati, when she gave him a wreati of violets at Braccio Martelli's wedding feast, so now Giuliano held a xiostra in honour of another fair lady, "la bella Simonetta," the young wife of his friend, Marco Vespucci. He composed verses in praise of her beauty and goodness, invoked her name when he rode in the lists, and made her the object of the Platonic passion which Poliziano celebrates in his famous poem. Giuliano's Tournament was held on the 28th of January, , on the same Piazza di Santa Croce where Lorenzo's Giostra had taken place six years before. Then Piero had been alive, but now his two sons were the representatives of this illustrious house, and the stately pageant which gratified the hearts of the Florentines, afforded a fitting opportunity for celebrating the glories of the Medici brothers and their accession to supreme power. Nothing which could add beauty or splendour to the show was neglected. Signor Poggi has recently published a document, which he discovered in the Magliabecchiana Library, giving several interesting details of the combatants who took part in the Giostra, and of the armour which they wore and the banners and devices that were borne before them. Seven youths of the noblest families in Florence, clad in richest apparel, resplendent with silks and jewels, with pearls and rubies, entered the lists that day; Pagolo Antonio Soderini, Piero Guicciardini, the cousin of the historian, who left his books, sorely against his inclination, and joined in the tourney, at Lorenzo and Giuliano's urgent entreaty, Benedetto dei Nerli, Luigi della Stufa, Piero degli Alberti and Giovanni Morelli. Each rider was accompanied by twenty-two youths in jewelled armour, and followed by a troop of men-at-arms, while a page in sumptuous attire bore a standard with his chosen device before him. As in Lorenzo's tournament, each cavalier had the image of his lady-love represented on his banner, so on this occasion Giuliano and his rivals each had the effigy of his mistress borne before him. The best artists in the city were employed, and there was quite a stir in the workshops along the banks of the Arno. Giuliano's armour and helmet were exquisitely wrought by Michele Bandinelli of Gaiuole, a talented goldsmith who served the Medici during many years, and whose wife, Smeralda, had her portrait painted by one of Botticelli's assistants about this time. A still more illustrious artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, painted the banner of another of the competitors, Giovanni Morelli. Other ladies, in the forms of nymphs and goddesses, clad in bright and varied hues, and bearing the mottoes of the respective knights, were represented on the different banners. Only Piero Guicciardini, who preferred humanist studies to - the society of fair ladies, chose Apollo slaying the Python for his device. But Giuliano's mistress was represented in a singularly beautiful and elaborate style. On her head she wore a helmet, under which her rippling locks flowed loose on the breeze. In her right hand she held a jousting lance, and in her left the shield of Medusa. Her eyes were fixed on the sun, and in the meadow of flowers where she stood, was the god of love, bound by golden cords to the trunk of an olive tree. On the boughs of the tree was written this motto: " La sans pareille. The poet speaks of the dream which comes to Giuliano in his sleep, and tells us how the hero sees a vision of his lady, Simonetta, wearing the armour of Minerva and the shield of Medusa, while behind her he sees Cupid bound to the green column of Minerva's happy plant. Pargli veder feroce la sua donna. Legar Cupido alia verde colonna Delia felice planta di Minerva. Spence, in the Pitti Palace. For, as M. Muntz proceeds to show, this work of Botticelli's is mentioned in two other Inventories of the contents of the Medici Palace, which were taken at a later period, and in both cases is described as Minerva and a Centaur. Unfortunately the banner has shared the fate which has befallen the great majority of the works that were painted by Sandro for the Medici and preserved for several generations in the palace of the Via Larga. The Giostra was celebrated with triumphant success. Giuliano made a splendid figure as he rode into the lists that day in his flashing armour, mounted on the warhorse "Orso," which had been presented to him by Costanzo Sforza, the lord of Pesaro. There, before the eyes of his adored mistress, the gallant youth vanquished all his rivals, and bore ' E. Miintz, " Les Collections des Mddicis," p. Botticelli's share in the day's festivity naturally brought him into close relations with the Medici brothers, and prepared the way for the future commissions which he received from Lorenzo and the members of his immediate circle. Vasari mentions two " most beautiful profile heads of women," which must have been executed in those early days, and which he had seen among the treasures of the Medici Palace, in the reign of Duke Cosimo. There was the likeness of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the admirable mother to whom Lorenzo was so deeply attached, and whose death in he lamented so truly. The other, Vasari tells us, was said to be the portrait of the innamorata di Giuliano di Medici," that bella Simonetta who, as we have already seen, was the lady of his heart and the Queen of his Tournament. The Vespucci, we know, were among Botticelli's earliest and most "constant patrons. Theiv palasso was in the same parish as Sandro's home, and they had a country house at Peretola, where the Filipepi also owned property. Vasari tells us that the artist helped in the decoration of their palace, and painted a series of subjects full of beautiful and animated figures set in richly carved frames of walnut wood. And a few years after Simonetta's death he was employed by her kinsman, the ecclesiastic Giorgio Antonio Ves- pucci, to paint a fresco in the parish church of Ognissanti, where the family had their burial place. So that nothing is more likely than that Sandro should have painted the portrait of Marco's fair wife, whose features he had already reproduced in the Pallas of the standard which Giuliano had proudly borne to the fray on the great day of his Giostra. Two portraits which bore the names of these ladies and were not without a certain relationship in style and execution, were formerly ascribed to the master and supposed to be the works described by Vasari. One is the profile bust of a pleasant-looking, fair-haired lady clad in the simple everyday dress of a Florentine citizen's wife, with an honest, sensible face, such as we should expect to belong to Lorenzo's wise and large-hearted mother. But although the picture, which Rumohr bought in Florence for the Berlin Gallery, may possibly represent Lucrezia Tornabuoni, its execution is too inferior to be from the hand of Botticelli, and it can only be a school work. Yet there is character as well as refinement in the clear-cut features, and undoubted charm in the slender, girlish form, with its quiet, simple dress of Puritan simplicity, the plain white cap and white slashed sleeve of the dark square-cut bodice, which in shape and hue so closely resembles the Berlin picture. Poliziano describes her as "a simple and innocent maiden, who never gave cause for jealousy or scandal," and says, that "among other excellent gifts she had so sweet and attractive a manner that all those who had any familiar acquaintance with her, or to whom she paid any attention, thought themselves the object of her affections. Yet no woman ever envied her, but all gave her great praise, and it seemed an extraordinary thing that so many men should love her without exciting any jealousy, and that so many ladies should praise her without feeling any envy. He sent his own doctor, Maestro Stefano, to attend her, and when he went to Pisa in April, charged her father-in-law Piero to let him have the latest re- ports of her health. On the i6th Piero wrote: " La Simonetta is much the same as when you left. There is but little improvement in her condition. : Sitemap

Black chalk on light yellow paper. Smiling Woman. Chalk on paper turned yellow. Unfinished Study. Black chalk, gray watercolour on paper. Luini, Bernardino. The Game of the Golden Cushion. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy. A woman seated on a chair reading, with a child standing by her side. Metal-point and white body colour on paper. Allegory of Grammatica. Head of a Muse. Pencil on paper. Mercury Offering the Cup of Immortality to Psyche. Portrait of a Young Girl. Study of Venus. Brown ink on paper. Red chalk on white paper. Savoldo, Giovanni Girolamo. Saint Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre. Martyrdom of St. Lady with a Lute. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland, UK. The Negress Katherina. Silverpoint drawing on paper. Polidoro da Caravaggio. Woman Seated with a Piece of Cloth [verso]. Altdorfer, Albrecht. Judith, seated nude with a sword in her right hand, gazing down at the head of Holofernes in her left hand. Portrait of Lucina Brembati. Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, Italy. The Incident in the Story of the Vestal Claudia. Venus and Cupid. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. Peasant Man and Woman Dancing. Engraving on paper. Peasant Woman with Two Jugs. The Noble Lady from Dance of Death. Stories of St Barbara detail. Three Feminine Heads. Red chalk on laid paper. Woman seated holding a statuette of victory. Mary Magdalen. Our Lady of Sorrows. Height: Width: Der Welt Lavf Sleeping Justice. Judith, looking towards the right, seated nude atop the dead body of Holofernes, with a sword in her right hand and the head of Holofernes in her left hand. Magdalen Reading. The Magdalen Reading. Oil on oak. Bordone, Paris. The Venetian Lovers. Noli Me Tangere. Oil on panel transferred to canvas. Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Katharina von Bora. Oil on limewood panel. Saint Helena with the True Cross. Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman. Ideal Head of a Woman. Black chalk on paper. Schoolmistress with Her Pupils. Young Men Dancing around a Woman. Betrothal portrait of Sybille of Cleves. Schlossmuseum, Weimar, Germany. Katharina von Bora, future wife of Martin Luther. Sammlungen auf der Wartburg, Eisenach, Germany. A Pagan Sacrifice. Lais of Corinth. Portrait of an Unknown Lady. Margarethe Luther, mother of Martin Luther. Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling. Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling detail. Portrait of Lady Mary Guildford. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis MO. Black and coloured chalks. Portrait of Ursula Rudolph. Katharina Luther. Lutherhalle, Wittenberg, Germany. Oil on panel, transferred to canvas. Figure of Woman Shown in Motion. Black chalk heightened with white chalk on green paper. Pen and brown ink on white paper. Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Deposition detail. A Blonde Woman. Height: 1, mm 51 in. Width: 1, mm Allegory of the Virtues. Double portrait of Martin Luther and Katherin von Bora. Portrait of Katherine von Bora. Emperor Charles V Receiving the World. Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Portrait of Violante, daughter of Palma Vecchio. Bronzino, Agnolo. Portrait of a Lady in Green. Portrait of Eleanora, Queen of France. Adam and Eve. Museo de San Carlos, Mexico. Old Man and Young Woman. Oil on Lime panel. Portrait of a Young Lady. Salome detail. The Courtesan and the Old Man. Portrait of a Lady in Red. Portrait of a Lady in Red detail. Rosso Fiorentino. Palace of Fontainebleau, Fontainebleau, France. Height: mm Width: mm Study of a seated woman holding a book. Jupiter and Io. Leda with the Swan. Judith Dining with Holofernes. Mixed media on limewood. The Ill-Matched Lovers. Portrait of a Woman Margherita Paleologo? Heemskerck, Maerten van. Portrait of a Lady Spinning. The Ill-Matched Couple. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Gossaert, Jan Mabuse. Lady Portrayed as Mary Magdalene. Lady Elyot. Chalk, pen and brush on paper. Head and shoulders of a young woman. Madonna and Child with Saints. Red beechwood panel. Black chalk. A Turkish Slave Schiava turca. Mixed media on red beechwood. Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Isabella d'Este, Duchess of Mantua. Portrait of Anne Stafford. Portrait of a Woman with a Pearl Necklace. Portrait of Sibylle von Cleve, Electress of Saxony. Saxon Princesses Sibylla, Emilia and Sidonia. Sibylle, Electoral Princess of Saxony. Portrait of Antea 'La Bella'. Primaticcio, Francesco. Danae Receiving the Shower of Gold. Scorel, Jan van. Portrait by Jan Van Scorel. Weiss Gallery, London, England. Tarquin and Lucretia. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. Jane Seymour, Queen of England. Jane Seymour, Queen of England detail. La Bella. The Natural Sciences in the Presence of Philosophy. National Museum, Warsaw, Poland. The Suicide of Lucretia. Neue Residenz, Bamberg, Germany. The Suicide of Lucretia detail. Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan. Schiavone, Andrea. A woman standing in profile writing on a tablet. Diana viewed from behind firing her bow. Venus of Urbino. Venus of Urbino detail. Bruyn, Barthel. Cranach, Lucas the Younger. Portrait of Anne of Cleves. Parchment mounted on canvas. Palmezzano, Marco. Watercolor heightened with white over black chalk. Portrait of a Woman with a Book of Music. Woman with a Cat. Allegory Of Christianity. Judith Seated in an Arch. Judith, half-length and in profile to the left, a sword in her right hand and the head of Holofernes in her left hand, an open window at top left. Justice, from a set of the Cardinal Virtues. Lucretia Standing at a Column. Naked Woman on an Armor Prudentia? Penance of St. John Chrysostom. Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi. Portrait of a Woman with her Daughter. Christ and the Adulteress. Jesus blessing the children. The Judgement of Paris. Daniele da Volterra. Eworth, Hans. Portrait of Lady Dacre. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. Girolamo da Carpi. Judith with the Head Holofernes. Schetsen van canephori en van ovale lijst. Anne of Cleves and Jane Small, formerly known as Mrs. Robert Pemberton. Portrait of Jane Pemberton. Vellum mounted on playing card. Watercolor on vellum mounted on playing card. Portrait of Margaret Wyatt, Lady Lee. A Turkish Slave detail. Minerva with a shield in her left hand, a lance in her right. Metal-point on prepared yellowish ground. Study of a Head. Magic Scene. Pandora opening the box. The Contest of the Pierides. Oil on wood transferred to canvas. Mutius Scaevola placing his hand in the flames left half of a composition, whose right half shows woman extending her right arms towards an altar. Sustris, Lambert. Road to Calvary. Portrait of Eleanor of Hapsburg. Wife of a donor kneeling by a river. Clouet, Jean. Madame de Lautrec. Chalk drawing. Christ addressing a group of women seated and standing on steps. Portrait of Catherine, Princess of Brunswick-Lueneburg. Crayon and watercolor. Eleonora di Toledo. A Young English Woman. Pen and ink and watercolor on paper. Portrait of Lady Margaret Butts. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Venus at the Forge of Vulcan. Portrait of Maria Salviati. Eleonora of Toledo with her son Giovanni de' Medici. Ferrari, Gaudenzio. St Anne Consoled by a Woman. Detached fresco transferred to canvas. Venus Seated. The Seven Ages of Woman. Oil on oak-wood. Hemessen, Jan Sanders van. The Prodigal Son in the Tavern among Whores. Clelia Crossing the Tiber. The Vestal Tuccia with the sieve. Pen and brown ink with brown wash on paper. The Virgin Annunciate. Perino del Vaga. Jupiter Appearing to Semele. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, highlighted with yellow gouache, on brown-washed paper. Study for Allegorical Figure of Prudence. Pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash, over traces of black chalk. The Abduction of Helen. Head of a Woman with Eyes Closed. Black chalk heightened wwith white chalk, on faded blue paper. Pen and brown ink on ivory laid paper. Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Belgium. Portrait of a Woman with Cat. The embrace of St. Joachim and St. The Nativity of the Virgin. Woman Praying. Galleria Sabauda, Turin, Italy. Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France. The Bath of Diana. Allegorical Portrait of Sir John Luttrell. Female Portrait possibly Queen Mary I. Lady Mary Dudley c. Unknown Lady. Passarotti, Bartolomeo. Copy after Michelangelo's Aurora. Pen and brown ink with red chalk on paper. Lot and his Daughters. Diana and Actaeon. Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides. Theseus Defeating the Centaurs. Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery detail. Portrait of Maria de' Medici. Eve detail. Portrait of a young girl. Portrait of Katharina von Bora. Woman with a Carnation. Musee d'Art et d'Archeologie, Moulins, France. Pitati, Bonifazio de'. Head of a young woman Kop van een jonge vrouw. Mor van Dashorst, Anthonis. Queen Mary Tudor of England. Salviati, Cecchino del. Mater Dolorosa. Veronese, Paolo. Aged Oriental with a Young Woman. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Italy. Laura Battiferri. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany. Miniature of Catherine de Medici. Watercolor on vellum. Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. Susanna and the Elders. St Mary Magdalene. Venus with Organist and Cupid detail. Young Woman with a Dish of Fruit. Four studies of an antique female torso. Ruggiero Saving Angelica. Allegorical portrait of Diane de Poitiers. Chateau de Chenonceaux, France. Carracci, Agostino. Red chalk, over possible traces of black chalk recto ; red chalk verso. Oil paint on wood. Tate Gallery, London, UK. Portrait of Juana of Austria, Princess of Portugal. Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, Spain. Portrait of a Gentlewoman. Marquesa of Las Navas. Hospital Tavera, Toledo, Spain. Death of Actaeon detail. Chiesa di San Salvatore, Venice, Italy. Arcimboldo, Giuseppe. Peasant Woman Going to Market. Pen, brush and brown ink with blue and gray washes on heavy paper. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain. Catherine de Medici. Pierre noire and red chalk on paper. Christ bidding farewell to his Mother after the Resurrection. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Moroni, Giovanni Battista. Portrait Of A Lady. Allegory of Vanity. Scene of a Birth. Supper at Emmaus detail. The Holy Women at the Tomb. Bruegel, Pieter the Elder. Dulle Griet detail. Portrait of Margaret Audley, Duchess of Norfolk. Vos, Marten de. Eliezer and Rebecca at the Well. Eliezer Asking for Rebecca to Marry Isaac. Rebecca Bidding Farewell to her Family. Portrait of Elizabeth Roydon, Lady Golding. Artemisia grieving over Mausolus. Aurora, after Michelangelo Buonarroti. Mystic Marriage of St. Beuckelaer, Joachim. Thus this brief period, which draws scant interest from historians, was a battleground of cosmic forces. In the end it is the women who make things come right, working t in the political arena but in the home and the private chapel. Linda Proud was born in Hertfordshire in and worked for most of her career as a picture researcher in publishing. Besides writing she works at home in Oxford with her husband, David Smith, in publishing services and teaches Creative Writing to American undergraduates at Oxford University. Show more Show less. Any condition Any condition. No ratings or reviews yet. Be the first to write a review. Peterson Paperback 4. Van der Kolk Paperback, 4. Save on Non-Fiction Books Trending price is based on prices over last 90 days. 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I was born in the land of no hope and, around age 19, opted out and started saying no to everything life had to offer. I had a glorious two years of belated childhood then everything went dark. Though the pressure to conform suddenly intensified, I carried on saying no. I said no to what appeared to be my last chance. Then everything changed. I went into this period as a painter, came out as a wri I was born in the land of no hope and, around age 19, opted out and started saying no to everything life had to offer. I went into this period as a painter, came out as a writer, and since then I've said yes to everything and life has been completely magical. While I was in Hades, I returned to a topic that had interested me at college, that of the Renaissance. Before long I was driven to tell the story of the men and ideas that surrounded Botticelli, against the dramatic backdrop of the Pazzi Conspiracy. I had to learn writing skills as I went. I had no idea, then, that I was writing a trilogy and that it would take thirty years to complete. I supported myself with a career in picture research, then in teaching creative writing to American students on Oxford programmes. I also worked as an editor with one of the top literary consultancies, helping first time authors improve their chances of publication. Pallas and the Centaur by Linda Proud

The story is told by two narrators, one male, one female, in a duet that weaves and spirals towards its conclusion that, although we are dual, we are one, and when a man and a woman are in harmony, unity reigns. His father was brutally murdered when Angelo was just nine. 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. Skip to main content. About this product. New other. Stock photo. Brand new: Lowest price The lowest-priced brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging where packaging is applicable. Qty: 1 2. Buy It Now. Add to cart. There are two realms: the mundane and the celestial. On the ground it is a tale of a pope's wrath aimed at the Medici; of Lorenzo de' Medici's infidelity and his wife's rage; of the poet Polizia's need to be independent of patronage. In heaven Ju works for the destruction of Lorenzo, a modern Aeneas. There are other, darker forces at work which would destroy the aim of Lorenzo and the Platonic Academy to build a new civilisation of the arts and humanities. Thus this brief period, which draws scant interest from historians, was a battleground of cosmic forces. In the end it is the women who make things come right, working t in the political arena but in the home and the private chapel. Linda Proud was born in Hertfordshire in and worked for most of her career as a picture researcher in publishing. Besides writing she works at home in Oxford with her husband, David Smith, in publishing services and teaches Creative Writing to American undergraduates at Oxford University.

Full text of "The life and art of Sandro Botticelli"

This at least we may safely assert. A close communion of spirit bound the two artists together at this period of their career, and the evident efforts which Sandro was already making to express the finer and more subtle shades of feeling in his art, may have been in a measure due to his intercourse with Leonardo. He brought with him Filippino, the Friar's little son by the nun Lucrezia Buti, and placed the boy in the charge of Sandro Botticelli to learn the art of painting, as his father had desired. By this time Sandro was evidently an independent master, with a workshop of his own, and in the following year his merit, as we have seen, was sufficient to attract the notice of Lorenzo dei Medici. His reputation soon spread beyond the walls of his native city, and a few months after he had completed his picture of St. Sebastian, he received an invitation from the Directors of the Duomo works at Pisa, who were desirous to see the decoration of the Campo Santo in that city completed without further delay. During the last six years, another Florentine master had been engaged in continuing the work begun in the previous century by Tuscan artists. This was Benozzo Gozzoli, who had also long enjoyed the favour of the Medici, and had recently decorated the chapel of their palace with his famous frescoes of the Procession of the Magi. But whether the Pisan magnates were not altogether satisfied with Benozzo's work, or whether they were anxious for the more speedy accomplish- ment of this great task, they invited Botticelli to Pisa, in order to judge for themselves if his powers were equal to so important an undertaking. Accordingly, in May, , he paid a short visit to Pisa and received a florin for the expenses of his journey from the Superintendent of the Duomo works. The result of this first interview was that Sandro agreed to paint a picture of the Assumption for the Chapel of the Incoronata in the Cathedral, on condition that, if the work met with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities, he would be employed to paint the same subject on the walls of the Campo Santo. In July Sandro returned to Pisa and began to execute this honour- able commission. During the next three months the archives of the Cathedral Chapter contain frequent entries of supplies of corn given to Sandro, surnamed Botticelli, as well as of payments of money for the purchase of ultramarine, which he had procured from Florence. In all probability he was glad to return to Florence, where his reputation was already secured, and where a series of new and important works was awaiting him. Soon after his return he may have executed the large tondo of the Adoration of the Magi, which is now in the National Gallery. The subject had become popular in Florence ever since, in , Gentile da Fabriano, theUmbrian master, "whose hand," Michelangelo said, "was as gentle as his name," painted his great Adoration by order of Palla Strozzi, for the monks of Vallombrosa. Gentile had treated the old Chris- tian story after the fashion of a mediaeval romance, surrounding it with all the pomp and splendour of those pageants that were so dear to the Florentine heart. He had borrowed motives from the Court life of the day, and introduced a gay troop of knights and pages, dogs and horses in the festal train. His example had been quickly followed by other artists, and Benozzo Gozzoli, in particular, had set forth the procession of the Three Kings in the most sumptuous style on the walls of the Medici Chapel. Sandro's own master, Fra Filippo, had been one of the first to adopt these fashionable motives. In one of his earliest works, the tondo in Sir Frederick Cook's collection at Richmond, the Carmelite friar introduced a vast number of richly- attired personages, with horses and dogs, into the scene, and at the same time cleverly arranged his composition to suit the circular form of his picture. This shape, which was to become so popular among Florentine artists in the latter part of the century, had hitherto been chiefly employed by sculptors, and was commonly used for bas-reliefs by Donatello and Luca della Robbia, but until this time had never, as far as we know, been adopted in painting. Botticelli's love for this subject was still greater than that of his contemporaries, if we are to judge from the frequency with which he painted it. Many are the versions which he has left us of this his favourite story, executed with the most different intentions and placed in the midst of the most varied surroundings. Sometimes he lays the scene in a rocky wilderness, sometimes in the heart of a pine-forest. In some cases he ' L. In the Ufhzi altar-piece the legend of the Three Kings becomes an apotheosis of the house of Medici; in a later work it affords Sandro an opportunity for celebrating Savonarola's dream of a New Jerusalem on earth. Last of all, we see it transformed into a mystic vision of the Celestial Country, where bright-hued seraphs sing their glad carols and dance hand hand-in-hand on the clouds of heaven, and angels welcome martyred saints to their embraces. Two at least of these manifold versions of the subject belong to the early days, when the influence of the Pollaiuoli was still the predominant feature of his art. The first was, as we have seen, the long panel in the National Gallery No. The second, which now belongs to the same collection, was evidently executed a few years later, and probably only finished after Sandro's return from Pisa in Like the earlier panel, this Adoration is still ascribed in the official catalogue to Filippino Lippi, and Dr. Richter is of opinion that it was the work of a follower of Botticelli rather than of the painter himself. But both Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who noticed the picture while it was still in the FuUer-Maitland collection, and the best Italian authorities, Morelli and Signor Frizzoni, as well as Dr. Ulmann and Mr. Beren- son, have all declared it to be by the hand of Botticelli, and there seems no reason to doubt the attribution. This may indeed be the identical tondo of the Epiphany which Vasari saw in the house of the Pucci, that illustrious family which was so closely connected with the house of Medici, and Botticelli's work may have been ordered by the same Antonio Pucci who gave Antonio Pollaiuolo the commission for his great St. Here Sandro, following his master's example, for the first time adopts the circular form, which he was afterwards to use with such excellent effect in some of his most popular compositions. As yet, however, he had not attained sufficient mastery to deal with this vast number of figures, and the general effect is somewhat confused and over-crowded. The Virgin and Child, St. Other decorative details and homely incidents recall the genre painting of Fra Filippo and his school, and the crowded compositions of Benozzo Gozzoli. The long-tailed peacock perched on the marble column, the dog sitting upon his haunches by his master's side, as well as the trumpeters and buildings in the background, seem to have been directly taken from the frescoes in the Campo Santo of Pisa, where Botticelli had lately seen Benozzo at work. But Sandro's individuality breaks out, as is commonly the case, in many of the types and attitudes which he employs, and notably in the two figures in the left-hand corner of the tondo, which bear a marked resemblance to a similar group in the more famous Adoration which he painted a year or two later for the church of Santa Maria Novella. Before we go on to speak of this altar- piece, however, we must record a fresh commission which Sandro received from another quarter which was to bring him into close connection with the Medici and to lead to new and important developments in his career. HEN Sandro Botticelli first opened a workshop and entered on V V his career as an independent master, a new and brilliant era was dawning- for his native city of Florence. Under the rule of Cosimo dei Medici and his son, Piero il Gottoso, both art and learning had received the most liberal encourag-ement. Never before had there been a time when public buildings, churches and palaces, were raised and decorated on so large and splendid a scale, never were scholars and artists so generously patronized and so highly honoured as in these days. The members of this illustrious house not only lavished their wealth on monumental buildings and works of art, but took a keen personal interest in the men whom they employed. Even Era Eilippo's freaks and follies only provoked a smile from this indulgent patron, who took the lively Carmelite friar under his especial protection, and when those about him urged that the painter's delinquencies should be punished, replied that men of his marvellous genius were angels of light and must not be treated like beasts of burden! He did not live for himself alone, but for the service of God and his country. Cosimo's elder son, Piero, shared his father's refined tastes, and in spite of continual ill-health, took keen interest in the artists whom he employed. From his favourite villa of Careggi, where he was constantly confined to his couch by acute rheumatic gout, he addressed letters to the painters who were at work in the Medici Palace and personally superintended the decoration of the chapel and halls. The kindliness of his nature and the affection which he inspired in the artists who were in his service is shown by the letters of such men as Benozzo Gozzoli or Domenico Veneziano, who address Piero as their dearest friend — Amico mio singularissimo — and make the most anxious inquiries after his health. But Piero only survived his father five years, and both his own sufferings and political troubles both at home and abroad interfered with many of his artistic schemes. He died on the 3rd of September, , at the age of fifty-three, and his elder son Lorenzo succeeded with general consent to the position which his father and grandfather had occupied at the head of the State. At this time Lorenzo, who had been born on the ist of January, , was just twenty-one, and had already given signs of the talents and wisdom which made his future career so remarkable. Under the care of his able and accomplished mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, both he and his younger brother Giuliano had received an excellent education and had been trained by the foremost scholars in all the learning of the day. Gentile Becchi of Urbino, the eminent Latinist, Marsilio Ficino, the great philosopher and translator of Plato, and Cristoforo Landino, the learned commentator of Virgil, and Dante were his principal teachers. At the same time, Lorenzo's keen sense of natural enjoyment made him take delight in pleasures and sports of every description, in music and dancing, in hunting and all knightly exercises. The tournament which was held on the piazza in front of Santa Croce at the Carnival of , a few months before Lorenzo's marriage to Clarice Orsini, was the most brilliant spectacle which had been seen in Florence for many a long day. On that occasion the young Medici rode into the lists in a gorgeous suit of red and white silk mounted on a horse given him by King Ferrante of Naples, with red and white velvet trappings embroidered with pearls. The silken scarf across his breast was embroidered with his device, Le temps revient, wreathed in fresh and withered roses. I find that it cost about 10, gold ducats. Although I was not very strong or skilled in jousting, the first prize was awarded to me, a helmet inlaid with silver and adorned by a figure of Mars. During the last years of his father's life he took a prominent part in the management of public business, and displayed a prudence and capacity which fitted him to assume the independent control of the State. All eyes were now turned to him as the natural successor to the exalted but unolficial post which Cosimo and Piero had held during the last thirty- five years. Lorenzo himself has described the offer which was made him by the leading citizens of Florence in a passage in his memoir, which is of interest: " On the second day after my father's death the most distinguished officers of the State and the chiefs of the ruling party came to our house to express their sorrow for our loss and to request me to undertake the administration of the government of the city as my father and grandfather had done till now. This proposal seeming contrary to my natural instincts — for I was then only twenty-one — and entailing much labour and danger, I accepted it very unwillingly, and only for the sake of protecting our friends and fortunes, since in Florence it is difficult to 38 IL MAGNIFICO possess wealth without retaining" political influence. He was convinced that his sway was necessary for the good of the State, and neglected no means of strengthening his position. From the moment that he took up the reins of government he determined to surround himself with a splendid court, and showed himself a generous and enlightened patron of art and letters. Marsilio Ficino and the older humanists who had enjoyed Cosimo's favour were invited to hold meetings of their Academy in the palace of the Via Larga, and celebrated Plato's birthday in the gardens of the Medici villa at Careggi, while the younger scholars and poets were attracted to Florence by a patron whose love of antiquity was as genuine as their own, and who himself wrote Latin verses worthy to rank with their best productions. Niccolo Valori, one of his contemporaries, describes the great rejoicing with which Lorenzo received the newly-discovered bust of Plato that was sent him by Girolamo Roscio, and tells us how, when he was oppressed with the burden of public affairs, the contemplation of some noble Greek marble would suffice to restore his serenity of mind. When he went to Rome in 1, to assist at the coronation of Pope Sixtus IV, the most memor- able thing recorded in his memoir is that he brought back with him two marble busts of Augustus and Agrippa with which the Pope presented him, as well as a chalcedony cup and a number of medals and cameos which he had purchased there. So fine was his taste in these matters and so passionate his love for Greek and Roman art, that at the time of his death the collection of antique marbles and gems in the Medici Palace and in the Casino and gardens of San Marco was the finest in the world. Architects and sculptors, painters and goldsmiths, alike found in the Magnifico a splendid and generous patron who had inherited the grand traditions of his ancestors, and grudged no expenditure on public monuments and works of art. But I do not regret this expenditure, although many persons think that we should have done better to have kept part of this money in our own purses, for I consider the money to have been well spent, since it has helped to promote great public objects. Scholars and painters in all parts of Italy begged him to honour them with commissions or to help them in bad times and difficult moments. We find Andrea Mantegna writing from the court of the Gonzagas at Mantua to place his services at the Magnifico Lorenzo's disposal, and at the same time beg for a trifling gratuity to enable him to build a new house for himself and his family. His advice on artistic questions was eagerly sought after by other princes. Both as the favourite pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi, that spoilt child of the Medici, whose talents had been held in such high esteem by Cosimo and his sons, and as the skilled assistant 40 GIULIANO of Antonio Pollaiuolo, who was so constantly employed by three generations of the house of Medici, Sandro needed no introduction to Lorenzo's notice. Already, towards the close of , the master had, as we have seen, received an order to paint a St. Sebastian for this august patron. In the following year, after he had returned from his unsuccessful visit to Pisa, he received a new commission from the Magnifico's brother, Giuliano dei Medici. The second son of Piero was four years younger than Lorenzo, and was endowed with those personal attractions which his elder brother lacked. Tall and handsome, active and muscular, he excelled in all knightly exercises, in riding and wrestling, throwing the spear and tilting. While Lorenzo was decidedly plain with weak eyes, a broad nose, large mouth and sallow complexion, Giuliano's fine black eyes, curling dark hair, olive skin, and animated expression gave him a dis- tinctly attractive and picturesque appearance. Although inferior to Lorenzo in ability and intellect, he inherited the refined taste of his family, was fond of music and painting, and wrote poetry which Poliziano describes as full of thought and feeling. From his boyhood Giuliano had been the darling of the people, and his reckless courage in the chase or tournament, his gay manners and courteous bearing made him a favourite with all classes. Poliziano and Machiavelli both tell us that he was the idol of the Florentines, and Paolo Giovio speaks of him as the prince and leader of the gilded youth of his day. But he was always loyal and affectionate to Lorenzo, and no shadow of jealousy or suspicion ever seems to have clouded the excellent understanding that existed between the brothers. While the elder of the two devoted his time and attention to the management of public affairs, the younger hunted and jousted and wrote verses in praise of fair ladies, and took a leading part in those pageants and amusements which delighted the eyes of Florence. As Lorenzo's Tournament had been given in fulfilment of a promise which he made to the beautiful Lucrezia Donati, when she gave him a wreati of violets at Braccio Martelli's wedding feast, so now Giuliano held a xiostra in honour of another fair lady, "la bella Simonetta," the young wife of his friend, Marco Vespucci. He composed verses in praise of her beauty and goodness, invoked her name when he rode in the lists, and made her the object of the Platonic passion which Poliziano celebrates in his famous poem. Giuliano's Tournament was held on the 28th of January, , on the same Piazza di Santa Croce where Lorenzo's Giostra had taken place six years before. Then Piero had been alive, but now his two sons were the representatives of this illustrious house, and the stately pageant which gratified the hearts of the Florentines, afforded a fitting opportunity for celebrating the glories of the Medici brothers and their accession to supreme power. Nothing which could add beauty or splendour to the show was neglected. Signor Poggi has recently published a document, which he discovered in the Magliabecchiana Library, giving several interesting details of the combatants who took part in the Giostra, and of the armour which they wore and the banners and devices that were borne before them. Seven youths of the noblest families in Florence, clad in richest apparel, resplendent with silks and jewels, with pearls and rubies, entered the lists that day; Pagolo Antonio Soderini, Piero Guicciardini, the cousin of the historian, who left his books, sorely against his inclination, and joined in the tourney, at Lorenzo and Giuliano's urgent entreaty, Benedetto dei Nerli, Luigi della Stufa, Piero degli Alberti and Giovanni Morelli. Each rider was accompanied by twenty-two youths in jewelled armour, and followed by a troop of men-at-arms, while a page in sumptuous attire bore a standard with his chosen device before him. As in Lorenzo's tournament, each cavalier had the image of his lady-love represented on his banner, so on this occasion Giuliano and his rivals each had the effigy of his mistress borne before him. The best artists in the city were employed, and there was quite a stir in the workshops along the banks of the Arno. Giuliano's armour and helmet were exquisitely wrought by Michele Bandinelli of Gaiuole, a talented goldsmith who served the Medici during many years, and whose wife, Smeralda, had her portrait painted by one of Botticelli's assistants about this time. A still more illustrious artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, painted the banner of another of the competitors, Giovanni Morelli. Other ladies, in the forms of nymphs and goddesses, clad in bright and varied hues, and bearing the mottoes of the respective knights, were represented on the different banners. Only Piero Guicciardini, who preferred humanist studies to - the society of fair ladies, chose Apollo slaying the Python for his device. But Giuliano's mistress was represented in a singularly beautiful and elaborate style. On her head she wore a helmet, under which her rippling locks flowed loose on the breeze. In her right hand she held a jousting lance, and in her left the shield of Medusa. Her eyes were fixed on the sun, and in the meadow of flowers where she stood, was the god of love, bound by golden cords to the trunk of an olive tree. On the boughs of the tree was written this motto: " La sans pareille. The poet speaks of the dream which comes to Giuliano in his sleep, and tells us how the hero sees a vision of his lady, Simonetta, wearing the armour of Minerva and the shield of Medusa, while behind her he sees Cupid bound to the green column of Minerva's happy plant. Pargli veder feroce la sua donna. Legar Cupido alia verde colonna Delia felice planta di Minerva. Spence, in the Pitti Palace. For, as M. Muntz proceeds to show, this work of Botticelli's is mentioned in two other Inventories of the contents of the Medici Palace, which were taken at a later period, and in both cases is described as Minerva and a Centaur. Unfortunately the banner has shared the fate which has befallen the great majority of the works that were painted by Sandro for the Medici and preserved for several generations in the palace of the Via Larga. The Giostra was celebrated with triumphant success. Giuliano made a splendid figure as he rode into the lists that day in his flashing armour, mounted on the warhorse "Orso," which had been presented to him by Costanzo Sforza, the lord of Pesaro. There, before the eyes of his adored mistress, the gallant youth vanquished all his rivals, and bore ' E. Miintz, " Les Collections des Mddicis," p. Botticelli's share in the day's festivity naturally brought him into close relations with the Medici brothers, and prepared the way for the future commissions which he received from Lorenzo and the members of his immediate circle. Vasari mentions two " most beautiful profile heads of women," which must have been executed in those early days, and which he had seen among the treasures of the Medici Palace, in the reign of Duke Cosimo. There was the likeness of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the admirable mother to whom Lorenzo was so deeply attached, and whose death in he lamented so truly. The other, Vasari tells us, was said to be the portrait of the innamorata di Giuliano di Medici," that bella Simonetta who, as we have already seen, was the lady of his heart and the Queen of his Tournament. The Vespucci, we know, were among Botticelli's earliest and most "constant patrons. Theiv palasso was in the same parish as Sandro's home, and they had a country house at Peretola, where the Filipepi also owned property. Vasari tells us that the artist helped in the decoration of their palace, and painted a series of subjects full of beautiful and animated figures set in richly carved frames of walnut wood. And a few years after Simonetta's death he was employed by her kinsman, the ecclesiastic Giorgio Antonio Ves- pucci, to paint a fresco in the parish church of Ognissanti, where the family had their burial place. So that nothing is more likely than that Sandro should have painted the portrait of Marco's fair wife, whose features he had already reproduced in the Pallas of the standard which Giuliano had proudly borne to the fray on the great day of his Giostra. Two portraits which bore the names of these ladies and were not without a certain relationship in style and execution, were formerly ascribed to the master and supposed to be the works described by Vasari. One is the profile bust of a pleasant-looking, fair-haired lady clad in the simple everyday dress of a Florentine citizen's wife, with an honest, sensible face, such as we should expect to belong to Lorenzo's wise and large-hearted mother. But although the picture, which Rumohr bought in Florence for the Berlin Gallery, may possibly represent Lucrezia Tornabuoni, its execution is too inferior to be from the hand of Botticelli, and it can only be a school work. Yet there is character as well as refinement in the clear-cut features, and undoubted charm in the slender, girlish form, with its quiet, simple dress of Puritan simplicity, the plain white cap and white slashed sleeve of the dark square-cut bodice, which in shape and hue so closely resembles the Berlin picture. Poliziano describes her as "a simple and innocent maiden, who never gave cause for jealousy or scandal," and says, that "among other excellent gifts she had so sweet and attractive a manner that all those who had any familiar acquaintance with her, or to whom she paid any attention, thought themselves the object of her affections. Yet no woman ever envied her, but all gave her great praise, and it seemed an extraordinary thing that so many men should love her without exciting any jealousy, and that so many ladies should praise her without feeling any envy. He sent his own doctor, Maestro Stefano, to attend her, and when he went to Pisa in April, charged her father-in-law Piero to let him have the latest re- ports of her health. On the i6th Piero wrote: " La Simonetta is much the same as when you left. There is but little improvement in her condition. She is attended by Maestro Stefano and everyone about her in the most assiduous manner, and this, you may be sure, will always be the case. She has less fever and oppression on her chest; eats and sleeps better. From what the doctors say, we quite hope that her illness will not last long. Little can be done for her in the way of medicine, but great care is necessary. Since Maestro Ste- fano's good advice has been the cause of the improvement, we all of us thank you exceedingly, and so does her mother, who is now at Piom- bino, and feels most grateful for the light which he has thrown upon her illness. But the improvement in the patient's condition proved only temporary, and four days later Piero wrote again to inform the Magnifico that his daughter-in-law was growing rapidly worse. The two doctors. Maestro Stefano and her habitual physician Maestro Moyse — evidently, as most doctors were in those days, of Jewish race — had held a consultation and did not agree as to the cause of her illness. They have, however, agreed to give their patient a certain medicine which they both hold to be an efficacious remedy. I know not," adds Piero sorrowfully, "what the result may prove. God grant that it may have the desired effect! Before the week was over, poor Simonetta had breathed her last, and Lorenzo's trusted servant, Bettini, wrote to his master of the sad event: "The blessed soul of Simonetta has, I have just heard, passed into Paradise. Her end, it may be truly said, was another Triumph of Death, and indeed, if you had seen her lying dead, she would have seemed to you no less beautiful and attractive than she was in life. Requiescat in pace. Lorenzo has told us how the news reached him at Pisa on that sweet April evening, and how as he walked in the garden, thinking sadly of the beloved dead, a bright star rose suddenly above the horizon, and he knew that it was the blessed Simonetta's spirit which had been transformed into this new constellation. In a sonnet, which has a prophetic strain, he paints the happy soul bending from heaven to bid her lover weep no more, lest his tears should mar her bliss, and tells him that all her thoughts are still of him, on that blessed shore where she awaits his coming. If Simonetta's name lives in the immortal verse of these Florentine poets, tradition has associated it no less intimately with the art of Botti- celli. A whole group of portraits, in which this gentle maiden is represented with the golden curls, bright eyes and " dolce riso,'' of which the poets sing, are to be found in public and private collections, all alike ascribed to Sandro. Chief among these is the beautiful portrait at Chantilly, inscribed with the words— " Simonetta Januensis Vespuccia," in which the best modern critics now recognize the hand of Piero di 48 Spooncr. National Calleiy. All of these have the same fair, rippling hair, the same animated expression, the same rich costume, and ornaments of pearl and gold, in marked contrast to the Puritan simplicity of the Pitti portrait. Whether they came from Botticelli's workshop or are copies of some lost original, they all have certain distinctive features which reappear in Sandro's conceptions. This has led some writers, notably Mr. Ruskin, to see in the peculiar types which recur in his paintings— the long throat, tall, slender form and angular features, reminiscences of Giuliano's lost love, the fair mistress whose fame lives in Poliziano's verse and Lorenzo's sonnets. It is Simonetta, Mr. He paints her as Venus rising new-born from the waves and holding court in the bowers of spring; or Abundance, light of foot and glad of heart, scattering her treasures of plenty as she walks; as Zipporah at the well, where Moses waters her father's flock ; or as Truth, rejected of men, calling on heaven to bear her witness and teach Florence the lesson which her children refused to learn. The theory, interesting and ingenious as it appears, will hardly bear too strict an examination, but the tradition which ascribes the authorship of these numerous portraits of Simonetta to Botticelli aff'ords another proof of the painter's close connection with the Medici house. Unfortunately, the other portraits which Sandro painted for the Medici have shared the same fatality which has attended his pictures of Simonetta. Two portraits of Giuliano, with the olive skin and thick locks framing his strongly-marked features and lively black eyes, are still. It is true, in existence, and were during many years the subject of an animated controversy between Italian and German critics. Morelli contended that the portrait at Bergamo was the original work by Sandro, while Dr. Bode stood out stoutly in defence of the Berlin picture. As a matter of fact both of these lack the life and vigour of Botticelli's art; and Mr. The only Medici portrait now in existence to which we can point with any certainty as being the work of Botticelli, is one of the Magnifico's uncle, Giovanni. This handsome and genial prince, who had laughed over Fra Filippo's escapades and admired his art so keenly, died in , at the age of forty-two, to the bitter grief of his old father, so that Sandro could never have known him personally. His little picture of Cosimo's younger son must have been copied from some earlier image, whether a medal or one of the wax effigies that were modelled from a cast taken after death. The regular features are admirably modelled, and there is just that touch of melancholy in the expression which is often seen on the faces of those who die young. In order that there should be no mistake as to his identity the painter represented Giovanni holding in both hands a medal bearing the effigy of Cosimo, the old father to whom he was so fondly attached, and who used to say as he wandered through the rooms of his stately palace, inconsolable for the loss of his favourite son: "This is too large a house for so small a family. Bode, among others, considers the drawing of the hands too faulty for Sandro, and has recently put forward his reasons for assigning it to an inferior artist. He further declares it as his opinion that the person represented is not Giovanni dei Medici, but the medallist Niccolo Forzore da Spinelli of Arezzo, who was frequently employed by the Medici family. One other portrait, which is now universally recognized as the work of Sandro, is the bust of a Florentine youth in the National Gallery No. This portrait, which was long attributed to Masaccio, and first restored to its true author by Morelli and Dr. Frizzoni, is evidently an early work, but already shows signs of that mastery which Botticelli afterwards revealed in portraiture. We have no clue to the personality of this youth in the red cap, with the broad forehead and the mass of thick wavy locks; but the force and beauty with which his bright, open countenance and keen intellectual air are rendered awakens our curiosity. He was in all probability some comrade of Sandro's youth, whether a student of art or letters, who belonged to the burgher class, and whose strong, eager face, and evident enjoyment of life forms a striking contrast to the high-bred air and mournful expression of Giovanni dei Medici. HE first work in which Botticelli revealed the full individuality of -L his style and the complete mastery of means to which he had attained during his second period of training in the bottega of the Pollaiuoli, was the Adoration of the Magi now in the Uffizi gallery. The chief thing that strikes us in this famous little altar-piece is the boldness and originality of the conception. Certain traditional features which belonged to all former versions of this favourite subject are still retained. The peacock with spreading tail is perched on the rough- hewn stones of the ruined wall which supports the wooden roof of the stable of Bethlehem; and the Star of the East, standing over the place where the young Child lay, pours a golden flood of light on the Holy Family. But the Virgin and Child occupy a prominent position in the centre of the picture, and are raised on a higher plane than the Magi and their followers, while St. Joseph looks on from behind, leaning his head on his hand, wrapt in profound contemplation. The number of spectators is greatly reduced, and although as many as thirty figures are still retained, the skill with which they are arranged in separate groups causes the number to appear much less. Schneider, Platonis Opera Graece 3:xxxii—xxxiii his sole reference to Proclus since he did not know of the Melissa! These ideal numbers are thus at the very apex of the intelligible world and serve as the principles of being, as the highest level of Ideas, as the measures of all reality. Indeed, according to Porphyry's Life Indeed, despite the De Numero Fatali and various disquisitions of his own on the musical proportions, Ficino probably willingly embraced this Plotinian dismissal, sanctioned as it was by such passages in the Republic as 7. Be that as it may, the larger underlying issues of the passage in the Republic 8, namely the nature and function of the celestial circuits and their role in the providential plan, and the question of man's freedom of choice in the midst of a sensible reality governed by destiny, are very much Plotinian issues and figure prominently in 3. Nonetheless, despite his fundamental Plotinianism, one does not sense here the presence, or at least the pressure, of Plotinian texts, except perhaps in his concluding chapter on astrology. Armstrong's comments in the headnote to his translation of the treatise in the seventh and last volume of his Loeb Plotinus Cambridge, Mass. He does, however, draw our attention to Plotinus's discussion of Aristotle's account of ideal numbers in the Metaphysics A, M, and N. We should note that Plotinus had a full knowledge of the subject and recommends its practice; see his Enneads 1. We should recall that for the Greeks in general the unit is outside the number series, Aristotle defining number as "a plurality of units" or alternatively as a "limited plural-. The Phaedo B9—C9 declares that there are Forms of numbers in which individual numbers participate see Guthrie, History Given the absence of any unequivocal mention of an intermediate class of mathematicals in the dialogues themselves see Guthrie, History —, citing Cherniss , Ficino's primary source for the Platonic status of mathematicals was, ironically, Aristotle, who declares in his Metaphysics b14—18 and ff. While mathematicals are nowhere named in the Republic , later interpreters have argued they are part of the upper half of the Divided Line at D. While the matter of what Plato himself believed has been the subject of endless controversy among modern scholars, Ficino was in no doubt of their existence, given the Neoplatonic tradition and above all the testimony of Proclus. The Republic 7. Allen London, , pp. In short, having found no guidance earlier in the Platonic tradition, and having wandered earnestly in the "delightful meadows" of the first twelve treatises of Proclus's Republic Commentary that had come to his attention as late as and still found nothing, Ficino must have gradually concluded that he would have to attempt an independent explication of the geometric number. For the mathematical treatises of Theon, of Nicomachus, and of Iamblichus, the extant philosophical treatises of his two most revered Platonic authorities, Plotinus and Proclus, the essays even of Plutarch—all had maintained a judicious Pythagorean silence. The sources of Ficino's wider knowledge of astronomy, judicial astrology, and harmonics are of course another matter, but would include Ptolemy, Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Proclus again, Boethius, and a number of medieval figures, along with medieval epitomes and handbooks. Thus the starting point for him clearly remained: first, the contentious passage in the fifth book of Aristotle's Politics ; and second, what Plato had to say about the cosmological significance of numbers and their proportions in the Timaeus [] and Epinomis. These texts—. At stake, as the last chapter testifies, is the status of astrological disposition and influence in the providential order, and thus the problematic relationship between man's divinely ordained freedom and the motion of the stars—the relationship, that is, between transitory human time and what the Timaeus 40C calls the intricate "choric dances" of celestial time. In order to understand Ficino's unraveling of Plato's mathematical mystery in his commentary on the Republic 8, we must first familiarize ourselves briefly with aspects of the basic terminology of traditional Pythagorean arithmogeometry, arithmology, and the lore of figured numbers, as Ficino himself had become acquainted with them earlier in his career by way of Theon of Smyrna's Expositio. We must bear in mind that his mathematical explanations and excursions here are oriented towards one particular goal: the interpretation of perhaps the most riddling passage in the Plato canon. Certainly, he never intended his commentary to serve as a counterpart to, or even as a compendium of, the various ancient introductions to mathematics, notably those by Theon himself and by Nicomachus and his commentators. Portions of his own earlier Timaeus Commentary had to a degree already served that purpose, especially with regard to promoting a Platonic understanding of musical proportions and harmonics and of the crucial role they had played in the Creator-Demiurge's structuring of the material world and of the World-Soul and other souls. When Socrates observes in book 8 of the Republic that the geometric number is a "human" and imperfect number, and that it has four terms and three intervals related to each other in certain proportions, to elucidate his meaning seems to require, at least for a Neoplatonist. Waszink has argued for the influence on Calcidius whom he assigns to the first half of the fourth century of the Timaeus Commentary by Plotinus's leading disciple and biographer, Porphyry c. Notre Dame, Ind. Dillon, Middle Platonists , pp. Ficino was obviously not in the position of being able to assess Calcidius in these terms. While he speaks of him as a Platonist and lists his commentary among the Platonic books to be found among the Latins in a letter to Martinus Uranius alias Prenninger of June Opera , p. Certainly he never accorded him the stature he accorded Plotinus, Proclus, and the Areopagite. For Ficino's debts to the Proclus commentary, see Gentile in Mostra , pp. Here Timaeus deals with the generation of the first two cubes of 8 and 27 by way of the two quaternary sequences 1—2— 4—8 and 1—3—9—27, which commentators since antiquity have visualized as a lambda, the eleventh letter in the Greek alphabet. In the process he invites us to examine the proportional relationship between 8 and 27 in terms of two means, 12 and 18, [6] and thereby establishes a set of fundamental proportions or what we now think of as ratios though Euclid and Nicomachus, for instance, had insisted that "proportion" should be reserved only for a relationship between at least three terms embracing two ratios. Ficino's Timaeus Commentary 19 Opera , p. With these means, the lambda, which signifies 30, is transformed, like the tetraktys, into a triangle, into a delta signifying the all-important 4! Even so, 6 remains its key in that the products of the three descending steps as it were of the lambda—that is, of 2x3, of 4x6x9, and of 8x12x18x27—are all powers of 6, being its cube, and 46, being the square of that cube or 6 x6 or 6 x6 x6 or 6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5. See Michel, De Pythagore , pp. In his Expositio Theon takes logos to mean "the relationship of proportion or ratio" or the "ratio of proportion" 2. Hiller, pp. Ficino's access to and knowledge of Euclid has yet to be investigated. However, the standard medieval if thoroughly "scholasticized" redaction was done by Campanus of Novara in — and eventually published in Venice in , and again in and A "free reworking" of earlier translations from the Arabic, including Adelard's, it included books 14 and 15 and sought to elucidate the axiomatic structure of the Elements by emphasizing arithmetical rather than geometrical proof. It was revised and reissued by Luca Pacioli Paciuolo in in response to the new humanist version by Bartolomeo Zamberti published in ; and the two competing versions were then issued in by Faber Stapulensis in a composite volume. The editio princeps of the Greek text by Simon Grynaeus did not appear until Earlier, the distinguished mathematician and astronomer Regiomontanus — had set about revising the Campanus version in the s, though this revision has been lost since ; however, a copy of Adelard's Latin Euclid that belonged to him does survive, dating from and containing annotations up to the seventh book. We might note that in his entire works Ficino never alludes to the Elements , and that the references to "Euclides" in his Opera , pp. However, from the Middle Ages to the end of the sixteenth century, translators, editors, and commentators frequently confused the two Euclids though Lascaris, for one, had correctly distinguished them ; see Heath, Elements —4. Ficino too may therefore have thought them one and the same. It was precisely these two ratios of and that Ficino was to bring to bear on his elucidation of the crux in the Republic , more particularly since they appear to be underscored by the important testimony of Aristotle's Politics at 5. For here Aristotle argues that Plato had established "the origin of change" in a hitherto perfect state in a number with a "root" in the ratio of , and that this root "when joined to the five gives two harmonies. We therefore need to be acquainted with the basic categories, as Ficino understood them, of what the Pythagorean tradition had presented as figured or figural numbers. We should begin with Ficino's working assumptions about, and definitions of, the kinds or classes of numbers. These will be largely familiar to those scholars already acquainted with the ancient Pythagorean mathematical tradition as fully described by Paul-Henri Michel, for instance, in the monumental study already cited. For "diagram" diagramma , see n. Pythagorean dimension of Ficino's work and intellectual background has remained up till now entirely unexplored, perhaps even unsuspected, by scholars of Renaissance Platonism; and the terrain as a whole is rather forbidding. In the following analysis the references in parentheses are to the chapter and line numberings of my edition of the text Text 3 in Part Two below. Odd numbers Ficino thinks of as male, as indivisible, and as incorporeal, since they derive "from their own root or seed" 6. They have "greater kinship with oneness"; and they "abound" with it, beginning with, ending in, and converting to it 8. The even numbers by contrast are female, divisible, and corporeal, the 2 being the first "fall" from the 1 and thus the first instance of division and diversity. Ficino refers to the 2 as being like indeterminate matter, citing Archytas as supposing the 1 is the Idea of the odd numbers while the 2 is the Idea of the even 8. Odd numbers possess the one as "the bond" or "hinge" of themselves, and exist about the 1 as their center; while even numbers once divided are "torn apart" and none of their parts survive, the odd numbers once divided continue to exist with the 1 in their parts as the "indivisible link" 8. Hence they seem to be "unfolded" rather than "divided. The first number as such is the 3, the 2 being not so much a number as the "first fall from the one," "the first "multitude" 6. This situation Ficino declares "is like the mystery of the Christian Trinity" 8. The "fate" of the first number 3 is thus. Euclid, Elements 7, defs. See Michel, De Pythagore , p. Because of this abundance or "copiousness," the 3 is called masculine. If the male odd numbers abound, the female even numbers by contrast suffer from "dearth," "partition," and "fall" 6. Ficino acknowledges that such a view runs counter to the "human and moral praise" we usually extend to the even numbers because they can be equally and therefore justly distributed if we are thinking, that is, of enacting justice among equals. But, he argues, "the more sacred and divine praise" is directed towards the odd numbers such as 3, 7, and 9; for they "comprehend" the even and are "hinged" upon the 1 as their "mean," "center," and "god," the 1 which is the source of equal distribution and "the principle of the world's order" 6. Clearly, Christian trinitarian assumptions are reinforced by such definitions. Despite his acceptance of 3 as the first number proper, there are times when Ficino thinks of 2 and indeed of 1 also as numbers; for all numbers look to the 1 as their source according to the ancient tag that they are 1 multiplied. The 1 as odd is thus the ultimate principle of identity and likeness and as such resembles God. They are the prime numbers, and Ficino, following the Euclidean tradition, describes them as the "prime unequals. Ficino usually thinks of 2 not 4, however, as the first even number but cf. Theon, Expositio 1. There are three important related categories of numbers that the Pythagorean tradition characterized as either "perfect," or "abundant," or "deficient. First is the category of truly perfect numbers. Though 10 is thought by the Pythagoreans to be a perfect number and 1 is perfect in power, [18] a truly perfect number is exceedingly rare, since it is identical with the sum of its own factors, its aliquot partes 4. There are still higher perfect numbers, but Ficino never mentions them. In using "oddly odd" as a term for compound odd numbers Ficino seems to be following Euclid rather than Theon, who reserves the term for the prime odd numbers—see Expositio 1. However, he seems to be ignoring Euclid's, or an interpolator's, finespun distinction between "evenly odd" and "oddly even," a distinction also noted by Theon in 1. Heiberg and Heath both in fact reject def. For the Pythagoreans' praise of 10's perfection, see Aristotle, Metaphysics 1. Euclid, Elements 7, def. Pistelli , alludes to the possibility of the fifth perfect number, that is, 33,, See Heath's table of the first ten perfect numbers, Greek Mathematics — The perfect numbers "contain the circuit itself of divine generation"—"as rare as is the perfection, so rare is the divine progeny that proceeds" Most numbers, however, are "deficient," that is, their factors add up to a sum less than themselves: for instance, 8, the first of such numbers, has as its factors 4, 2 and 1, but they only add up to 7 4. Finally, an "abundant" or "increasing" number is one where the sum of its factors exceeds itself. Twelve is the first of such numbers, the sum of its factors of 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1 being 16 4. Twelve is also abundant because it is the product of the "twinning" of 6, the perfect number 3. Still another category interests Ficino, that of the "circular" numbers, numbers whose powers happen to end in the same digit. Besides being the first of the perfect numbers, 6 is also an example of a circular number in that both its square of 36 and its cube of also end in 6. Another example of such a number is 5 with its square of 25 and its cube of However, 4 has its circularity "intercepted in the plane" of 16 even though its cube of 64 ends in 4; it is thus an example of a "lesser" circular number See Robbins in D'Ooge, Nicomachus , p. There is a fourth category, incidentally, that Ficino never alludes to here, namely of "friendly numbers"—where one of two numbers is equal to the sum of the aliquot parts of the other. Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arith. Pistelli , attributed their invention to Pythagoras, and the only such numbers known to antiquity seem to have been and ; magical powers were attributed to both. Ficino's Timaeus Commentary 17 Opera , pp. A "spousal" or "nuptial" number is the product of two adjacent numbers: for instance, 6 is the product of 2x3 and 12 of 3x4. Indeed, 6 is the first "spousal" number because it is the product of the first odd and therefore male number multiplying the first even and therefore female number—and was so denominated by the Pythagoreans. Ficino specifically says that 12 is the second "spousal" as the product of 3x4; and presumably, 20 would be the third spousal as 4x5, 30 the fourth as 5x6, 42 the fifth as 6x7, and so on. Multiples of factors differing by more than 1 cannot be called spousal 4. Interestingly, the heading of Ficino's expositio in all the texts speaks of "the nuptial number" whereas the heading of his commentary proper speaks of "the fatal number. In short, from Ficino's perspective Plato was concerned in the Republic with at least three kinds of mystical numbers: with the fatal numbers that signal the onset of a perfect constitution's decline; with the nuptial numbers that signal the best opportunities for marriage and begetting in a state that wants to resist a decline before its fatal time; and with the truly perfect numbers that betoken and preside over the divine births Plato writes of at B3. Let us now turn to various conceptions of numbers as products. Of these there are three kinds: linear, plane, and solid and the terms can be used in the Pythagorean tradition of sums as well as of products. Ficino's most likely sources were Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arith. All numbers when seen as the products of 1 or that have no factor other than 1 are called "linear. Thus 4 as 2x2, 6 as 3x2, 8 as 4x2, 9 as 3x3, 10 as 5x2, and 12 as both 3x4 and 6x2 are all planes. Obviously, planes multiplying either linear numbers or other planes will always produce further planes as the case of 12 above illustrates: and the multiplication of two planes that are squares, for instance, 4 and 9, will always produce another square, in this case 36 Thus 8, 27, 64, and are the cubic solids of 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Obviously, cubes multiplying cubes will always produce further cubes: for instance, the two prime cubes 8 and 27 multiplied together produce , the cube of 6 Solid numbers are known Platonically as "of the three" 5. Clearly, some numbers that are products can be viewed as linear, or as plane, or as solid: 8, for instance, can be seen as 8x1 or as 2x4 or as 2x2x2. But their solidity will be their most characteristic or important mode. Among plane and solid numbers there are three kinds of products; and these Ficino designates, following Plato's Theaetetus E—B and Theon's Expositio , as "equilateral" Theon's "equally equal" ,. An "equilateral" is the product of any number multiplying itself—either once to produce its square or twice to produce its cube. Uniquely as always, the 1 too is an equilateral insofar as it is the square and the cube of itself 6. All other equilaterals resemble it in their "equality and straightness" since it is their "seed" 8. Accordingly, the first series or succession of equilaterals as products is the regular succession of square numbers: [1], 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, , and so on. But, he continues in an extension of the analogy, cube numbers are like God when He uses the prime being as His means. But if we think of God using the prime being as His means to create them, then we must replace 2x2x2 with 2x4, 4 as 2x2 being the prime being whom God multiplies. Similarly 27 can be viewed either as 3x3x3 or as 3x9 8. It is difficult to gauge the force of these distinctions for Ficino. An equilateral number of peculiar importance is the "universal" number as 10 2 and the multiples that immediately "teem" from it and from 10 its root: as 10 3 , 10, as 2 and 1,, as 3 3. See below. He is equating God with the first hypostasis, the One, and the prime being with Mind, the second hypostasis. From Mind proceeds Soul, the third hypostasis, and thence Quality and the realm of Body. In Christian terms the realm of Mind can be equated, in part at least, with the angels generically conceived as Angel or as seraphim, the highest of the angels. Hence Ficino is suggesting that we can think of God either as the immediate Creator of everything in the universe or as the Creator by way of the angels, who themselves created, or assisted Him in the creation of, the lower realms. However, insofar as the Neoplatonic hypostasis Mind also suggests God in His immanence God in His transcendence being identified with the first hypostasis, the One , then we must think of the prime being as signifying the Son. It is not clear what Ficino intends. For the problems besetting the attempt to accommodate Ficinian metaphysics with trinitarian theology, see my "The Absent Angel in Ficino's Philosophy," Journal of the History of Ideas 36 , —, and "Marsilio Ficino on Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity," Renaissance Quarterly 37 , —, with further references. An "unequilateral" plane, on the other hand, is the product of two different numbers, and an unequilateral solid of three. An unequilateral is "long" when it is the product of two numbers differing only by one [35] —differing by 1 being a privileged difference given the unique status of the 1. For instance, 6 is the product of 3x2, 12 of 3x4; or, in the case of solids, 12 is the product of 2x2x3, 18 of 2x3x3. The "long" series is thus [2], 6, 12, 20, 30, 42, 56, 72, 90, , , , , , , and so on. These unequilaterals also constitute from another perspective the sequence of spousal numbers, that is, of 1x2, 2x3, 3x4, 4x5, and so on. An unequilateral is "oblong," however, when it is the product of numbers differing by more than one, as 15 is the product of 3x5 or 24 of 12x2 or 8x3 or 6x4 6. Here the possibilities are endless and of little interest to the Pythagorean tradition. Of course, with the possible exception of 6, which is uniquely long except as 6x1 , all unequilateral long products can also appear as oblong: for example, 12 is both 3x4 long and 6x2 oblong , 20 is 4x5 long but also 10x2 oblong. Plato, Theaetetus E ff. Ficino, Timaeus Commentary 19 Opera , pp. Finally, there is a category of diagonal or "diametral" products which Ficino doubtless derived principally from Theon's Expositio 1. As described by Theon, we obtain the sequence of the squares by adding the value of the diagonal to the side while adding the value of twice the side to the diagonal. The diagonals will be 3, 7, 17, 41, 99, and so on; and each when squared—9, 49, , , —will equal double the squares of the sides provided we give or take 1 in alternation. That is, they will equal 8 as 2x2 2 plus 1, 50 as 2x5 2 minus 1, as 2x12 2 plus 1, as 2x29 2 minus 1, as 2x70 2 plus. Nicomachus, Introductio 2. Because, we recall, he had access only to a manuscript containing the first twelve treatises, Ficino cannot have been influenced here by the analyses in the thirteenth treatise of Proclus's Republic Commentary ed. Kroll, In general see Michel, De Pythagore , part 2, chapter 2 passim, esp. Or, put another way, the square constructed on the diagonal will always be now smaller by 1, now greater by 1, than double the square constructed on the side. Since this plus-or-minus-one alternation is perfectly regular, from the Pythagorean-Ficinian viewpoint, adaequatio or compensatio emerges in the long run; that is, the "power" of the diagonal as a genus, as distinct from the powers of individual diagonals, maintains a ratio to the "power" of the side of Incidentally, the successive values of the accompanying sides—2, 5, 12, 29, 70, and so on—constitute the "lateral" numbers. With all these diagonal and lateral powers the 1 is called the "equalizer" 5. We might note that if the sides are even then 1 has to be added to them, but if odd then subtracted from them. The issue turns on the Pythagorean-Platonic distinction between a rational and an irrational root. While 9 and 49 for instance have rational roots of 3 and 7 respectively, 8 and 50 by contrast have irrational roots of 2. Nevertheless, 8 and 50 can be said to have rational roots, in the Pythagorean sense, of 3 and 7 in that 9 and 49 are their proximate powers, the nearest squares equilaterals to them. Thus 8 and 50 can be said to have both irrational and rational roots, the latter being primary. Accordingly, Ficino followed Theon and what he took to be the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition in postulating both rational and irrational roots for the product of twice the square of the side and then. Some products, finally, are "similar," others "dissimilar. While equilaterals are always similar whether as squares or cubes , unequilaterals are similar only when their "sides" or factors are proportional; for example, 6 is similar to 24 in that, as 3x2 and 6x4 respectively, both contain the ratio of ; again 18 and 8 are similar in that, as 6x3 and 4x2 respectively, both contain the ratio of Let us now turn to the figural or geometrical importance that Ficino associates, like the ancients before him, with certain fundamental number series we generate not by multiplication but by addition; that is, to numbers viewed as sums and not as products. The chief authorities for Ficino would have been, as we have seen, the treatise of Theon, and perhaps that of Nicomachus and of his commentators, all of them Neopythagorean works that were probably preserving or amplifying a tradition concerning figured sums and summing stemming from earlier, perhaps even from primitive, Pythagoreanism. Clearly, Ficino was aware from. Leaving aside the special case of linear numbers seen simply as the sums of ones or as the products of nx1 , [45] let us concentrate on three kinds of "plane" sums. Ficino refers to these likewise as equilateral or unequilateral, or as triangular, and he concentrates on the three paradigmatic series, those resulting from: a the summing of the regular sequence of odd numbers; b the summing of the regular sequence of even numbers; and c the summing of the regular sequence of both odd and even numbers. From his reading of Theon, he was certainly aware of other derivative arithmetic series, those resulting, for instance, from summing by 3's, 4's, 5's, 6's, and so forth. He thinks of 1 as "the leader of the odd and of the equilateral numbers," because it is also, mysteriously and uniquely, the square and the cube of itself 6. Ficino treats of this addition series first precisely because it generates a category of especial interest to the Pythagorean tradition, and to himself in his analysis of the Plato passage, the category of sums that are also, from another perspective, square products or, to put it another way, that have rational roots. For the successive equilateral sums—1,. Following Theon, Ficino thinks of the sums in the series as being the result of the addition of the next odd number to the sum and not to the succession of the preceding odd numbers, e. They are also, from a third perspective, the spousal numbers. As products these unequilaterals are always even and therefore feminine , because they result from an even number multiplying an odd 6. This is only true of course of the "long" and not the "oblong" unequilateral numbers, that is, of the products of two numbers differing only by 1 1 having, I repeat, a unique and mystical significance that also pertains to numbers that differ by 1. With "oblong" numbers—for instance, with 35 as the product of 7x5—the situation is obviously different, since a third of the products will be odd those which are the result of odd numbers multiplying odd while two-thirds will be even those which are the result of evens multiplying either evens or odds 6. Ficino must nevertheless be concerned with the oblong numbers insofar as Plato's geometric number, being inclusive of all kinds of numbers, also contains this kind. In particular, he will have to confront 7x as we shall see. Following Theon's Expositio 1. His argument hinges once again on the notion of ratio. Between, say, 9 and 4, both of which are equilaterals, the mean is 6, an unequilateral; and the ratio of and of in each case is Again between 16 and 9, both equilaterals, the mean is 12, an. Once more Ficino thinks of the sums in this series as being the result of the addition of the next even number to the sum and not to the succession of the preceding even numbers, e. In both these instances the equilaterals are said to contain or "bind fast" the unequilaterals, since the ratios between the mediate unequilateral and its two bracketing equilaterals are identical. But if we reverse the situation and regard the equilateral as bracketed by two unequilaterals, for instance 9 as bracketed by 12 and 6, then the unequilaterals do not contain the equilateral, because the accompanying ratios are not identical—12 to 9 being , but 9 to 6 being Thus Ficino argues, the equilaterals "encompass and bind fast" the unequilateral 9. Again, note that, for the Pythagoreans, the 1 is an equilateral, although it is simple and all the other equilaterals are compound, while 2 is an unequilateral. The third primary series, logically perhaps the first but treated third both by Theon and by Ficino and whose discovery the tradition attributed directly to Pythagoras, Ficino refers to as the trigon or triangle sequence. Throughout Ficino works with a set of terms concerned with ratio logos , or what he consistently thinks of as proportion analogia , though proportion, strictly speaking, involves at least two ratios and three terms, as we have seen. In the forefront of his mind are musical proportions and the resulting intervals, a subject he had already dealt with in some detail in his commentary on the Timaeus and elsewhere, [51] and the principles of which he had derived from Plato himself, from the commentaries on the Timaeus by Calcidius and by Proclus, and in all probability from the musical treatises of Augustine. See n. We should recall, furthermore, that Plato himself uses the harmony of the musical scale as a symbol of the harmony of the state in the Republic 4. Ficino's starting point for an examination of the cosmic and musical ratios is the celebrated passage, as we have seen, in the Timaeus on the lambda at 35B—36B and again at 43D. Between the prime cubes 27 and 8, he observes in chapter 3, Plato had postulated three intervals with 18 and 12 as the geometric means, the three "proportions" between 27 and 18, 18 and 12, and 12 and 8 being all in the same ratio of , that is, of one and a half to one. However, between these two prime cubes also exist the two "equilateral planes," 16 4 2 and 9 [3] from the equilateral sequence. And between these two equilaterals appears the unequilateral Since the equilaterals contain the unequilateral, the proportions between 16 and 12 and between 12 and 9 are both in the same ratio of , that is, of one and a third to one. Thus Plato's lambda of numbers implicitly links the two prime cubes by way of the two geometric means 18 and 12 and by way of the constant ratio of But 16 and 9—the equilateral planes—are each linked to 12 in the ratio of and thence in Ficino's terms "bind" it in. For 12 is the sum of the "prime foundations" of the two ratios governing Plato's lambda, namely and , in that 7 is the "foundation" or "root" of the ratio of , and 5 of the ratio of , the two roots together adding up to 12 3. These two ratios are especially esteemed because they and the ratio "accord with the perfection and steadfastness of things" 9. Moreover, Ficino argues, the sesquialteral is in accord with the ratio of in that , , , , form a se-. Hence I have rendered the terms as ratios throughout. For the complex situation, see Michel, De Pythagore , pp. The two ratios of and are also especially esteemed by Platonists because the one produces the musical consonance of diapente , the interval of the perfect fifth; the other that of diatesseron , the interval of the perfect fourth. From them is produced the universal harmony known as the diapason , the interval of the octave, "the most celebrated of harmonies" 3. From Ficino's Pythagorean viewpoint 12 also contains the two ratios internally in that, having dissolved the one root of 5 into 3 and 2, we can double the 3 and then double it again to produce Similarly, having dissolved the other root of 7 into 4 and 3, we can triple the 4 to again produce Thus 4, 3, and 2, the "parts" of 7 and 5, when all "mixed together," produce Accordingly, both by addition and by multiplication 12 contains the 7 and 5. Additionally, it is the result of multiplying the first two prime numbers 3 and 4 together—1 and 2 we recall are not numbers, 1 being the source of all numbers and 2 being "a confused multitude" 3. Ficino sees the presence of a great "mystery" here in that 7 is the number of the planets, and 5 the number of the zones of the world—the four zones of the four elements and the zone of heaven 3. Before turning to Ficino's attempted solution of Plato's account of the geometric number, let me end this review of his arithmological assumptions and his presentation of material from Theon's Expositio , by addressing briefly the traditional core of arithmology, the symbolic associations of the first ten numbers, the decad. Ficino does not present us with a schematic account here or as far as I know elsewhere , but. Ficino's Critias epitome Opera , p. The nature of his debts to particular ancient or medieval numerologists I leave to others to explore, [57] but he was obviously familiar with the sections on the decad in Theon's Expositio 2. ONE, chapter 8 argues, is the principle of all numbers and dimensions and therefore most resembles the principle of the universe itself, the One, [58] since it too remains entirely eminent and simple even as it procreates offspring. All the even numbers proceed from the 1 and the odd numbers turn back towards it. All dimensions issue from it as from a point. It is the substance of all numbers in that any number is 1 repeated. Hence 1 is the "measure" of all numbers whether odd or even, simple that is, measured by the 1 alone or compound that is, also measured, i. The 1 is like the maker of the world who imposes form on the 2 as on indeterminate matter. Yet the 1 "is both none of the numbers because of its most simple eminence, and all the numbers because it has the effective power of all numbers. Ficino refers to Aristotle's lost work The Pythagorean here in affirming that the Pythagoreans preferred the 1 to be odd because the odd, male number unlike the even, female number changes the number to which it is added, making the previously odd into an even, the previously even into an odd; as such the 1 is consid-. It contains, however, precisely the kind of Pythagorean number lore he was interested in, and I have cross- referenced it for that reason. Theon, Expositio 2. The Theologumena Kroll, both declare that the monad is sacred to Zeus but for Proclus, see n. Ficino's Philebus Commentary 2. The One "encloses all, forms all, sustains all, circumscribes all" p. By contrast, the infinite Plato is speaking of in the Philebus as in the Timaeus is matter itself, which is formed "by a certain beneficent glance of the divine countenance" p. This matter is the "necessity" that is formed by intelligence, the pure potentiality that submits to God's act p. In general see the Theologumena 1. The 1 is indivisible, for when it appears to be divided it is in fact being miraculously doubled. Thus as the principle of "identity, equality, and likeness" it again resembles God. It has a "marvelous likeness" to Him also in that however much you multiply or divide it by itself, you neither increase nor diminish it; for, without altering itself, it is the square, the cube, and all other greater powers within itself. TWO the Pythagoreans wished to be indeterminate, says Ficino 6. Preview — Pallas and the Centaur by Linda Proud. Following the murders committed by the Pazzi Conspiracy, Lorenzo de' Medici sends his family out to the country under the care of Angelo Poliziano. Tommaso divides his time between Marsilio Ficino, whose translation of Plato he is helping to complete, and Poliziano, who is becoming increasingly helpless under the bitter onslaught of Lorenzo's wife, Clarice. The domestic co Following the murders committed by the Pazzi Conspiracy, Lorenzo de' Medici sends his family out to the country under the care of Angelo Poliziano. The domestic conflict is a microcosm of Tuscany at war. Poliziano's sister, Maria, a survivor when her convent is razed by soldiers, makes her way to Florence to find the brother she barely knows. Together with Lorenzo's mother and Tommaso's wife, Maria works to find peace at a transcendental level. In the end, the fate of Florence hinges on one woman: Lorenzo's wife, Clarice. Get A Copy. Paperback , First , pages. More Details Original Title. The Botticelli Trilogy 2. Florence Italy. Other Editions 2. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Pallas and the Centaur , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Pallas and the Centaur. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. May 06, Judy J. A deeply written wonderful book In,over this having been to some of the parts of Italy the book spoke of. The style of the author is impeccable as is the history. I learn so much every time I read one of her books! Dec 10, Laura Emery rated it it was amazing. After reading this, the second book in the trilogy, I am compelled to immediately read the third! It focused quite a bit on the role of a woman during the Renaissance, which I feel is a rarely touched on subject and was very informative and entertaining. Like her first book, instead of focusing solely on the major players of the Renaissance-Lorenzo de Medici, After reading this, the second book in the trilogy, I am compelled to immediately read the third! Like her first book, instead of focusing solely on the major players of the Renaissance-Lorenzo de Medici, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo-she focuses on lesser known figures of the period with the important historical figures touching their lives on a regular basis. I would recommend this series to anyone, even if you are not a Renaissance freak like me! Feb 07, The Idle Woman rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , historical-fiction , my-library , renaissance. This absorbing, sensitive recreation of Medicean Florence between and is an excellent piece of historical fiction.

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