Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 2 Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 19.06.15 11:41 Seite 3 Frank Zöllner SANDRO BOTTICELLI Prestel Munich · London · New York Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 4 Contents Foreword 6 I Early Work 9 II Initial Success in Florence 29 III Botticelli as Portraitist 47 IV Primavera and her Counterpart: Camilla and the Centaur 65 V Botticelli as Frescoist in Rome: The Sistine Chapel 85 Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 5 VI Violence against Woman: The Tale of Nastagio degli Onesti 101 VII The Later Mythology Paintings 119 VIII Late Altarpieces 143 IX The Late Work: The End of Time and the End of Art? 161 Catalogue of Paintings 182 The Drawings 281 Bibliographical Credits 297 Bibliography 299 Index of Works 309 Index 312 Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 6 Foreword to the revised new edition When this book was first published in 2005, it was aimed primarily at emphasizing the genre-specific and socio-historical approaches in the study of Sandro Botticelli’s oeuvre. It also took a closer look at Botticelli in relation to the prevailing art theories of his day and the religious upheavals of the late fifteenth century. For these reasons, special consideration was given not only to the widely analysed mythology paintings, but also to Botticelli’s achievements as a creator of portraits and altarpieces. Moreover, the publication was intended to shed light on the specific visual intelligence of Botticelli’s works. Some of the issues addressed in the book have since been further elucidated by other scholars. Damian Dombrowski, for instance, has published an essay on the Lamentation of Christ in S. Paolino (cat. 68) that supports the findings outlined in chapter VIII regarding Botticelli’s significance as an inno - vative force in Florentine altarpiece painting. He proposes that the Lamentation of Christ was actually painted as early as the 1480s as a high-altar sacramental altarpiece and that the Annunciation (cat. 60), now in New York, originally formed part of the predella. Furthermore, substantial new research on Botticelli has recently been published in a conference transcript edited by Rab Hatfield. The papers include Jonathan Nelson’s exploration of Botticelli’s authorship of a Madonna currently in the Uffizi (inv. 1898, no. 504), with a frame still bearing the heraldic device of the Arte del Cambio. Another paper by Barbara Deimling posits that the painting widely known as Minerva and the Centaur (cat. 38) is more likely a depiction of "Camilla and the Centaur", based on the specifically Medicean- Tuscan nuptial iconography of the painting and its appeal to virtue. In yet another noteworthy contribution, Louis Waldman examines a late altarpiece from the workshop of Botticelli and presents archival evidence that not only dates the large-scale Pentecost (cat. 71) to the year 1505 but also identifies the patron as the Compagnia dello Spirito Santo di Montelupo. Such a precise revision of the dating of a major altarpiece is of considerable significance to our understanding of Botticelli’s later work, especially given the dearth of other reliably dated paintings or contracts from the artist’s final years. Recent research into new sources also forms the core of an essay by Gert Jan van der Sman on the Villa Tornabuoni frescoes (cat. 49). Based on a 1498 inventory of the Villa, together with other source material, the author has been able to demonstrate definitively that the frescoes in question were indeed commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni to mark the marriage of his son Lorenzo Tornabuoni to Giovanna degli Albizzi in September 1486. What still remains unclear, however, is why there is such a discrepancy between Botticelli’s portrayal of Giovanna and the portrait of her painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio (Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection). Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 7 The essay about the Villa Tornabuoni frescoes also points out the limited methodological value of a purely philological interpretation of Botticelli’s mythology paintings. One of the main theses in the present, revised publication is that social mobility, genealogical disadvantage, dynastic hierarchies and the violation of established norms are key elements in the interpretation of non-religious Renaissance paintings. A similar approach is taken by Bettina Uppenkamp in her essay on the panels depicting The Tale of Nastagio degli Onesti (cat. 47). Another interesting essay relating to the non-religious paintings is one by Jonathan Nelson, who notes that the Botticelli paintings intended as spalliere, to be integrated into the wooden panelling of a secular room (cats. 37–38, 47, 86–87), were specifically composed to be viewed from below. Finally, a number of monographic studies of Botticelli have been published in recent months. Hans Körner draws similar conclusions in his comprehensive treatment of a broad range of issues in the study of Botticelli and the key themes of Renaissance art. The methodologically narrower approach taken by Alessandro Cecchi in his sumptuous publication, on the other hand, presents new archival material pertaining to the circle around Botticelli that sheds some light on the artists in his workshop and on his role as a draftsman for other artists. Unfortunately, his book is, at best, selective in its treatment of recent interpretations of Botticelli’s paintings. That is regrettable, for it is, above all, the visually innovative way in which Botticelli’s works convey their subject matter that has made them a cornerstone of the art historical canon. Frank Zöllner · Leipzig, May 2009 Alessandro Cecchi, Botticelli, Milan 2005. Damian Dombrowski, ‘Botticellis ‘Beweinung Christi’ in der Alten Pinakothek. Aufgabe, Kontext und Rekons truktion eines Florentiner Altarretabels zur Zeit Savonarolas’, in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 69, 2008, pp. 169–210. Rab Hatfield (ed.), Botticelli Studies, Florence 2009 (including essays by Deimling, Nelson, Waldman). Hans Körner, Botticelli, Cologne 2006. Jonathan K. Nelson, ‘Putting Botticelli and Filippino in their Place: the Intended Height of Spalliera Paintings and Tondi’, in Invisible agli occhi. Atti della giornata di studio in ricordo di Lisa Venturini, edited by Nicoletta Baldini, Florence 2007, pp. 53–63. Jan Gert van der Sman, ‘Sandro Botticelli at Villa Tornabuoni and a nuptial poem by Naldo Naldi’, in Mit - teilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 51, 2007 (2008), pp. 159–186. Bettina Uppenkamp, ‘Ein Alptraum von Liebe. Botticellis Bildtafeln zur Geschichte des Nastagio degli Onesti’, in Hegener, Nicole /Lichte, Claudia /Marten, Bettina (eds.), Curiosa Poliphili. Festgabe für Horst Bredekamp zum 60. Geburtstag, Leipzig 2007, pp. 230–238. Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 8 Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 19.06.15 11:41 Seite 9 I Early Work Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 10 Alessandro di Mariano di Vanno Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli, was born in Florence in the year 1444 or 1445. As the youngest son of a tanner called Mariano Filipepi, the artist came from a humble background and, for him, like many others, the craft of painting offered an opportunity of modest social improvement. Mariano Filipepi and his wife Smeralda had eight children, only four of whom survived beyond childhood. One of them was the young Alessandro. The family lived in the district of Santa Maria Novella, where, in 1433, Alessandro’s father rented a house in the Borgo Ognissanti from a cloth merchant called Durante. And so Sandro Botticelli spent his formative years in a neighbourhood on the edge of town that was home to many cloth- making and weaving workshops, and was the site of the Ognissanti convent run by the Umiliati order. In 1458 the family moved to the Via della Vigna Nuova nearby, where Sandro was to live for the rest of his life. The artist’s relatively stable and uneventful life is reflected in the fact that, throughout his career, his clientele was predominantly from the area. Among his earliest patrons was the family of the notary Ser Nastagio Vespucci – the very same family as that of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci to whom America owes its name. Indeed, it may well have Previous page been the Vespucci family who first introduced Botticelli to the city’s most Virgin and Child with the Young John the Baptist, influential family, the Medici. Botticelli’s career, unlike that of the High detail, c. 1468 (cat. 3) Renaissance artists Leonardo, Raphael or Michelangelo, was founded mainly on FEDERIGO FANTOZZI, Plan of Florence, 1841, commissions from local patrons. Of all the Florentine artists who worked only detail: Borgo Ognissanti and Via della Vigna Nuova in their home city, Botticelli was one of the very few, if not the only one, to achieve lasting international fame. Botticelli’s career began like that of many other painters. After rudimentary schooling, he began an apprentice- ship at the age of thirteen. According to his father’s income tax statement, the young Sandro was a sickly lad. Moreover, as Giorgio Vasari noted in his sixteenth-century Lives of the Artists, he showed little interest in his lessons: “He was the son of Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, who raised him very conscientiously and had him instructed in all those things usually taught to young boys during the years before they were placed in the shops. And although the boy learned everything he wanted to quite easily, he was never- theless restless; he was never satisfied in school with reading, writing and arithmetic. Disturbed by the boy’s whimsical mind, his father in desperation placed him with a goldsmith, a friend of his named Botticello, a quite competent master of that trade in those days.” 10 I Early Work Botticelli_001_027_E_Botticelli_001_027_E 07.05.15 10:22 Seite 11 As Vasari’s biographies are not always to be taken too literally, it is quite possible that he merely invented Botticelli’s early departure from school to make the story a little more interesting.