CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE BOTTICELLI AND THE VICTORIANS )I A STUDY IN THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF TASTE AND ART HISTORY A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History by Joy f.1ul vaney June 1980 The Thesis of Joy Mulvaney is approved: Rlc. h ar d Vog 1 er Donald Strong California State University, Northridge ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter I THE RENAISSANCE REVIVAL AND THE NEW COLLECTORS: CHANGES IN TASTE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY • 7 II THE 1850s: EARLIEST VICTORIAN LITERATURE ON BOTTICELLI . • . 30 III 1860s: THE ORIGINS OF THE BOTTICELLI FAD AND ROOTS OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP •• 54 IV EARLY 1870s: RUSKIN AND PATER ..•. 73 v MID-1870s-1890s "BOTTICELLI MANIA" 98 VI LATE VICTORIAN INTERPRETATIONS OF BOTTICELLI . • • • • . • . 104 CONCLUSION • • . 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 131 iii ABSTRACT BOTTICELLI AND THE VICTORIANS A STUDY IN THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF TASTE AND ART HISTORY Victorian literature on Botticelli illustrates the interrelationship between changes in taste and the writing of art history. Botticelli was rediscovered in the 1850s, and rose to great popularity in the 1870s. During this period, writing on his art reflects this development and also mirrors the changes in taste that brought it about. The Botticelli literature of the 1850s shows that writers may cope with an unfamiliar subject by using inappropriate standards of judgment and overemphasizing the few sources of information at their disposal. In the 1860s, Botticelli scholarship begins to split in two directions, one related to modern methods of art historiography, and the other utilizing the literary approach to art that was a basic ingredient of the Botticelli fad. iv By the early 1870s, two influential writers, Ruskin and Pater, focused their attentions on the painter; and the fashion for his art grew in the wake of their studies. The writing that follows, from the mid-1870s through the 1890s, is characteristic of the diversity of Victorian views on art, and of the extremes prompted by the Botticelli fad, and the Victorian penchant for colorful, personal, literary style. Although the fashion for Botticelli engendered a distorted picture of the artist's life and work, it had the beneficial effect of bringing many of his lost works to light. v . ' INTRODUCTION I have long been interested in the process involved in writing on art, and the way in which views on art history and criticism are shaped by changes in taste. A study of the influences leading to the rediscovery and popularization of an obscure artist makes a good focus for an examination of this process. My topic, therefore, is not Botticelli himself, but why he was rediscovered in nineteenth-century England, how the Victorians formed their views on his art, and what this reveals about the way in which art literature evolves. Victorian literature on Botticelli possesses several advantages as a focus for this study. To begin with, it illustrates the way in which factual art history can be blended with art criticism to the extent that it is difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Victorian writers were eager to voice their own interpretations of artists' styles and subject matter, and did not insist on unwavering objectivity. Their articles reveal at least as much about themselves as they reveal about Botticelli. 1 2 Additionally, Botticelli's rediscovery and rise to popularity was both extreme, and confined to a limited period in time . • in about fifty years he became the center of a fad, after centuries of obscurity. The abundance of Victorian writing on both the Quattrocento in general, and Botticelli in particular, is another advantage to the subject. Finally, the rediscovery of Botticelli in Victorian England has a unique quality, for, although other Quattrocento artists were rediscovered in this period, Botticelli alone seems to have retained wide public recognition and popularity. The method of inquiry will be to examine the subject chronologically, relating new developments in social attitudes, and changes in taste to the evolution of views on Botticelli. The opening section describes the various influences on English taste that contributed to a new interest in Quattrocento art, and paved the way for Botticelli's rediscovery. This section provides a background for the earliest Victorian writings on the painter. Examined outside this context, these writings give the reader a strange, inconsistent picture of the artist; but placed within the framework of their time they become comprehensible. Proceeding thus, decade to decade, I have continued to relate Victorian Botticelli literature to the society that produced it. 3 The belief that one particular person or group brought Botticelli's art to public notice began in the nineteenth century and has continued to exert an influence on modern Botticelli scholarship. However, the growth of a taste for Botticelli was actually part of the general revival of interest in Quattrocento art that began in England in the first half of the nineteenth century. Victorian writing on Botticelli divides into two phases. The first covers the 1850s through the 1860s. In this period, the painter was finally beginning to be noticed, but only as one rather interesting, though peculiar, Quattrocento artist among many. The second phase, from the 1870s to the end of the century, covers the period in which he was singled out and became the center of a fashion. The literature of the 1850s demonstrates the way in which writers may react to a subject in art that is new to them. In this decade, Victorian critics did not know quite what to make of such an obscure artist, and so, they naturally set about trying to place Botticelli's work in a context of historical and stylistic develop­ ment. However, they did not have a continuous tradition of research and interpretation to start from, consequently, for historical background they relied heavily and unquestioningly on their one major source of 4 information, Vasari; and for stylistic evaluation they fell back on nineteenth-century standards, which naturally did not correspond to fifteenth-century art. This approach led to misconceptions and misunderstand­ ings that survived far into later writings. The 1860s can be seen as a crossroads for Botticelli studies in England. A scholarly method of treating the painter's art, exemplified by the work of Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, had begun to evolve out of the unsure beginnings of the 1850s; and this trend would probably have continued if certain influences in the English art world, coming together in the 1870s, had not diverted the course of Botticelli scholarship from relatively objective studies to highly personal and imaginative interpretations. This subjective approach is illustrated by an 1868 article by Algernon Charles Swinburne, which gave an early indication of what was soon to follow. The literature of the 1870s marks the beginning of the Botticelli vogue. The painter's sudden rise in popularity at this time is closely related to a fashion in culture that was based on a rather confused mixture of the aestheticism of Swinburne and Walter Pater, with the art criticism of John Ruskin, and with the Rossettian branch of Pre-Raphaelitism. Largely as a result of the fact that they each took a very literary 5 approach to art, creative personal interpretations of the art of past eras can be found in the art and writings of Swinburne, Pater, Ruskin, and Rossetti. This strong literary flavor is found throughout the Botticelli studies of the late Victorian period, and completely overshadows more scholarly approaches. The ambiguity of meaning in Botticelli's art lent itself beautifully to a variety of subjective inter­ pretations that begin, in the 1870s, with the writings of Pater and Ruskin. The personal style of both of these writers plays so important a part in their criticism that reading their work is like having a conversation with them. Often, one is more aware of the personality of the author than of the subject he is treating. After Pater and Ruskin, the number of articles written on Botticelli increased as his popularity grew. The articles written from the 1870s through the 90s are notable for their variety. This can be attributed to the Victorians' subjective approach to art, and also to the fact that they did not stress expertise. Many of the people who wrote on art were not specialists in the subject. In examining these writings, one can see how earlier interpretations survived to mold later views, how the particular interestsofeach writer affected his interpretation of Botticelli's art, and 6 how Botticelli fadism led to some extremes in fictionalized literary treatments of his life and work. Nevertheless, the Botticelli fashion did much to awaken interest in the artist and his work, for a number of his paintings were rediscovered in its wake. CHAPTER I THE RENAISSANCE REVIVAL AND THE NEW COLLECTORS: CHANGES IN TASTE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY In order to comprehend Victorian literature on Botticelli, which does not appear to any appreciable extent until the 1850s, one must examine the reasons that nineteenth-century writers began to take notice of an 1 artist who had been all but forgotten for centuries. Botticelli's rediscovery was part of a growth of interest in Italian Early Renaissance art in England. An under- standing of the factors that awakened this interest helps to explain how Victorian critics arrived at their various interpretations of Botticelli's art. In the eighteenth century, English taste was not favorable to Renaissance art. The most generally admired art was that of classical antiquity, of the High Renaissance, and of art based on High Renaissance 1 References to Botticelli in English literature prior to 1850 are cited by Michael Levey, "Botticelli and Nineteenth-Century England," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 {1960; rpt.