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Botticelli, itinerary of a child prodigy: birth of a star

2021-10-16T04:15:55.837Z


WEBSERIES 6/9 - Le Figaro Hors-Série devotes an exceptional number to the painter of Spring. At the age of thirty-nine, Sandro puts the finishing touches to The Birth of Venus, an allegory drawn from the verses of Politien. It makes him immortal.


Botticelli's Roman experience did not leave him unscathed.

Not that his self-esteem is so sore, but he hates meanness.

But it was necessary to be very naive to attribute the snub inflicted by Sixtus IV on Florentine artists to a simple lack of taste.

Through them, we were targeting the Medici.

For devious men, there is no small revenge.

Read alsoBotticelli, itinerary of a child prodigy: at the origin of genius

The war that has resumed with a vengeance between Florence and the Pope's States has only confirmed Sandro's suspicions. The tricks of the Bishop of Rome left a lasting mark on his mind. Although he found with pleasure the company of his friend Politian during his visits to Careggi, a growing doubt obsesses him: Marsilio Ficino always says that love is the spring of the soul, that each being tends towards the beauty… What if his optimism about human nature was just an illusion? Sandro, however, wants to keep faith in the happy promises of Neoplatonism.

In 1484, he drew from the verses of Politien the material for a new allegory. At thirty-nine, he will put the finishing touches to The Birth of Venus. A work of such splendor that it alone will be enough to make it immortal. “

Una donzella non con uman volto / Da'zefiri lascivi spinta a proda / Gir sopra un nicchio, / e by che'l ciel ne goda.

("

This maiden on a conch / Humans have no face, / The zephyrs push her to the shore / And the sky rejoices at her sight.

")

From ancient statuary, the goddess has grace and modest gestures. From Homer's legends, she borrows her incredible hair, her long golden locks that hug the sinuous lines of her shoulders and hips. As if Venus had flown in the waves which saw it born their incessant undulation where the gaze is lost. Who, in front of her, has not felt this indefinable enchantment, this interior delight, this suspension of all desire? Beautiful as a dream of stone, Botticelli's Venus does not have the exquisite sensuality of the Graces of Spring, nor the ingenuous seduction of the nymph Chloris. The fascination it exerts is of a different nature. With her face of a dreamy Madonna, she embodies the pacifying power of Love which reconciles the soul and the universe.Christianity and paganism mingle in this disturbing gaze, the perfect symbol of Neoplatonism.

However, the metaphysical theses of Careggi's men, however attractive they may be, seem very sulphurous to Innocent VIII, successor of Sixtus IV. In 1486, he condemned the theories of Pic de la Mirandole. Ficino himself is not long in being worried. The Pope sees in him more a magician than a philosopher. These new disappointments revive Sandro's concerns. He then launched headlong into the execution of the very special order he had just received from his friend Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, cousin of the Medici. The illustration of Dante's The Divine Comedy will occupy him until his death. Many times neglected, many times repeated, this work is an exploration of the human soul, through the torments of hell, the repentances of purgatory, the ecstasies of paradise.We read there the artist's anxieties, returned with all the violence of the waters born of the storm, sweeping away the barriers of his fragile mind. We read in it his hopes which do not want to die, his conviction that the Platonic vision joins the mystical outburst. Sandro nevertheless keeps his legendary good humor.

He rarely misses an opportunity to thumb his nose at the afterlife.

To make fun of him, he accuses one of his friends of being an Epicurean.

The friend, summoned by a priest to confess if he really believes that the soul dies with the body, retorts maliciously: "

In any case, it is surely true for that of Sandro, you have already seen such a beast. , he wants to comment on Dante and he doesn't know anything about it!

We will laugh for a long time at the dumbfounded air of the priest.

But Botticelli's contradictions are also those of the Florentines, whose biting irony hides their concerns more and more poorly as the end of the century approaches.

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

All news articles on 2021-10-16

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