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Botticelli, itinerary of a child prodigy: Roman holidays

2021-10-14T04:16:36.991Z


WEBSERIES 4/9 - Le Figaro Hors-Série devotes an exceptional number to the painter of Spring. Sixtus IV orders frescoes from Sandro to decorate his chapel. The artist makes his genius explode there. But the Pope prefers Rosselli to him.


Laurent had hanged the Archbishop of Pisa, an accomplice of the Pazzi.

For Sixtus IV, the pretext was too good.

Crying sacrilege, he immediately declared war on Florence, with the help of his ally Ferdinand of Naples.

Wasted effort.

The Medici, far from wavering, had consolidated their hold on the Tuscan city.

The Pope is a good player: on December 3, 1480, he signs peace with Laurent.

He knows it, he has just lost a battle for supremacy in Italy, but the enemy of yesterday can help him achieve a completely different ambition.

Read also In the workshop of the exquisite Botticelli

The Sovereign Pontiff, in his great design to beautify Rome, had a chapel built for the Vatican palaces. However, there is a lack of painters to decorate it. He will beg for them from Careggi's patron. And he wants the best. Laurent, anxious to calm the tensions between his States and those of the Pope, complies with good grace. Three Florentine masters will therefore join Perugino to decorate the chapel which is already nicknamed the Sistine: Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli.

No artist, however independent, would dare refuse the commission of a pope. And then Sandro is not unhappy to leave a little the family home and his older brother, his way of life disconcerts. Hadn't their father himself declared, in the land register, in 1481: “

Sandro is thirty-five years old, he is a painter and works when it suits him.

“These are not, alas, his only concerns: Simone has abandoned her job and is living in Naples, with no prospect of the future. For now, however, Sandro is dying to get down to business. He felt there was a challenge commensurate with his talents.

Without delay, he left Florence for the Eternal City.


As soon as he entered the Sistine, he captured all the originality of the building: with absolute architectural simplicity, the chapel is like the gigantic mount of an unfinished jewel. The frescoes will be the jewels. They must put in parallel Moses, bearer of the written Law, and Jesus, bearer of the Law of the Gospel. Sixtus IV, eminent theologian, is the author of this pictorial program which reminds the popes of their role as vicars of Christ and guarantors of the two Covenants.

When the final contract was signed by the painters on October 27, 1481, Botticelli had already completed the

Temptations of Christ

. He will still paint the

Episodes from the life of Moses

and

The Punishment of Korah, Datân and Abiram

. Its superiority over the other three artists is not in doubt. He alone manages to make full use of the space offered by these immense frescoes - over three meters high and nearly six meters long. Each composition is indeed a real puzzle: how to tell in a single painting several episodes of the same story without obscuring the overall vision? Sandro's stroke of genius is to use the landscape to give unity to his frescoes. In the

Episodes from the Life of Moses

, the prophet, in yellow, thus appears seven times, but the skillfully arranged hills and the forest in the center give depth and symmetry to the scene. A resounding success, and yet ... What should have been another triumph will end in a dismal failure.

In May 1482, the chapel was completed. The Pope rejoices. But it is not to Botticelli that his praise goes: seduced or pretending to be so by Rosselli's golds and flashy blues, it is to this needy painter that he awards the bonus promised to the most talented of the four. Worse, he requires the other three to smear their own creations with gilding. Death in the soul, we do it. Sandro swallows his contempt and leaves Rome on time. He leaves it to his nephew Benincasa, money changer at the Salutati bank, to claim his salary. For Sandro, memories of Rome thus retain a bitter taste. A sign of his disenchantment, he swears to banish from his works the ancient architecture so present in his frescoes in the Sistine. As if to better erase the memory of the affront. What a fly thewas it so peculiar to abandon Florence in this way? Once back in his hometown, he will never leave it. Or the importance of being Tuscan.

Botticelli, all the beauty in the world, € 12.90 on Figaro Store 

Cover of the

Figaro Hors-Série

dedicated to Botticelli La Belle Simonetta, Botticelli, 1485 (Städel Museum)

Source: lefigaro

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