fierce enemy of Florence, the Rome of the she-wolf, Alighieri’s haggard she-wolf, “brimming with all sorts of lust, which makes so many people live in sadness.” He retained impressions of religious anxiety, which would later lead this follower of Dante on his way to the apocalyptic religion of Girolamo Savonarola. He was thus, until his end, the nervous child that the honest Vasari described, a wavering personality that often shirked his duties, an enigmatic, alluring figure, like the mysterious creatures that slither through the half-light of his paintings.
27. Three Angels, c. 1470–1475.
Pen with brown shading with pink wash and white heightening on pink primed paper, 10.2 × 23.4 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
There is one particularity that casts another shadow over Botticelli’s charm. Modern criticism has been wary of old historical accounts, maybe to a fault. It thus took up Vasari and pointed out several paintings that he had falsely attributed to Botticelli in his chronicles. It then reattributed them either to Pollaiolo, Verrocchio, some student of Botticelli, some contemporary artist of very modest renown, or Alunno, an easy hallmark of the entire school. At the same time it gave back to Botticelli the Virgin and Child with an Angel of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, a painting that had long been thought to be Fra’ Filippo’s. Sometimes problems of doubtful authorship stir the curiosity of the world, and may have unfortunate effects on the glory of those who are thus dispossessed of a legendary dignity. While such accidents in art history reinforce the scepticism of the scholars, they can sometimes be remarkably interesting. For Botticelli, they have aesthetic and moral implications at the same time. They are a skewed testimony to his genius and to the prestige that his memory still wielded over Vasari’s contemporaries.
Let us now study Botticelli’s first paintings. Vasari writes that “at a very young age, giovanetto, he painted a Fortezza (an allegory of fortitude) for the chamber of commerce amongst representations of other Virtues that Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo had done.” The Saint Sebastian on wood, commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici and kept at the church Santa Maria Maggiore of Florence for some time, dates from 1474. The artist was nineteen years old at the time. And if we add to these two works the aforementioned Madonna of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Madonna of Santa Maria Nuova, the Madonna of Prince Chigi (Virgin and Child with an Angel), the Madonna of Naples (Virgin and Child with Two Angels), the Madonna of the Rose Garden, the Madonna of the Louvre (Virgin and Child with John the Baptist) as well as The Return of Judith to Bethulia, we have assembled, like on a little stage, Botticelli’s early work. In fact, several features of his future originality were already emerging.
28. Nativity with Saint John the Baptist, 1469–1470.
Fresco, 200 × 300 cm.
Santa Maria della Novella, Florence.
Fortitude and the Madonna of the Rose Garden, both sitting in an arched niche, are of a sculptural appearance, very upright, the head slightly bent to the left. Here we can see the first female faces with accentuated features, the widest part of which is at the level of the eyes and which then narrows down to the chin. An austere sweetness emanates from the Fortitude, who is draped generously and is wearing a gold and pearl diadem, iron armbands, and a chiselled steel breastplate. The red cloak unfolding on her knees is embroidered and bordered with Arabic letters. It is creating a colourful effect and also partly hiding the exaggerated length of her legs. She is holding the commander’s staff with both hands, propped up against her belly. This is a bellicose gesture for a seated figure, the same that Andrea del Castagno had lent to his coarse condottiere Filippo Scolari. Botticelli’s first flowers blossom around the Madonna of the Rose Garden, at the end of the tabernacle where the Virgin is resting. This is the decorative tradition that was dear to Fra’ Filippo, and also an endearing revelation of his affection for flowers, a very Florentine and Virgilian passion. The painter’s soul was doubtlessly wrapped in the memory of Dante’s mystical meadows. Botticelli’s first Madonnas and the angels that serve as their acolytes demonstrate his efforts to escape the dread of mimicry. They noticeably lack the religious fervour of Fra’ Angelico’s Madonnas. This Dominican monk of Fiesole was a content ascetic and a visionary tutto serafico in ardore, more prudish than the valiant Carmelite Lippi, and never dared paint a female face after a living model. His virgins are blonde and very gentle nuns, his angels blonde and curly, dancing in God’s gardens, reminiscent of an archbishop’s choir children whom the chorus master is letting out for some innocent play one Ascension Day or Whitsunday afternoon. They dance devotedly to liturgical rhythms and tunes of hymns. Benozzo Gozzoli’s angels at the Riccardi palace resemble youngsters receiving their first Communion at the holy table, kneeling, hands crossed over their chests, heads bowed, enshrouded in gold. They are awaiting the altar bread while under the vaults of the church the organ sighs: O salutaris!
Botticelli’s idealism, on the other hand, was less ethereal, yet not the bourgeois naturalism in which Fra’ Filippo often indulged. Lippi’s Madonna at the Pitti palace is more of a young girl than a young woman. She comes to us directly from the Florentine popolino, looking at us with a vague dreaminess, without too much adoration for the divine child on her lap who is gravely lifting his right arm with the demeanour of a preacher.
The maternal aura of Botticelli’s virgins is more reverential and attentive. Their eyes are almost closed in most instances. The Virgin and Child with Two Angels is almost severely stiff, despite the softness and abundance of her drapery, and her face is a little sullen. The life of the painting lies entirely in the Bambino’s expression of infantile tenderness, held by two little angels who are simple little boys straight from the Mercato Vecchio. Additionally, Jesus is trying to caress his mother with his little hands. From a plate that a young boy offers to her, The Virgin and Child with an Angel is taking some clusters of grapes and an ear of wheat, the symbols of the sacrament of the altar. With the other hand she is holding the Bambino, who lifts his right arm in a sort of premature Eucharistic benediction.
The Virgin and Child with an Angel, known as the Virgin of the Innocenti, sitting and showing her right profile, and the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist as a Child, kept at the Louvre, already look more sophisticated due to the sombre colour of the dress. The first has the uncertain, dreamy look of Lippi’s Madonna. Her headdress that covers almost all of her hair is taken from the popular fashion. The second has lowered her eyes and her head is covered with a light transparent veil, crowned by a halo of light. She piously presses the child against her chest, who is puffy, sickly, and whose anxious expression resembles the Jesus in Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair. The embrace of the Virgin of the Innocenti is less motherly. Assisted by the angel, whose blonde hair is braided like that of a little girl, she seems to be bouncing her son softly to amuse him or to rock him to sleep. The Virgin of the Louvre, in her dark blue cloak, is very grave, even melancholy. Does this meditating face betray a premonition of the tragic Mother of the Seven Sorrows, an anticipation of the Stabat Mater?
29. Adoration of the Child, c. 1470.
Pen with brown shading, white heightening and ink wash, 16 × 25.7 cm.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
30. Virgin and Child with an Angel, 1466–1467.
Tempera on panel, 87 × 60 cm.
Galleria dello Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence.
31. Sandro Botticelli (?), Virgin and Child with Angels, 1465–1470.
Oil and tempera on panel, 86.7 × 57.8 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
32. Sandro Botticelli (?), The Virgin and Child Supported by an Angel under a Garland, c. 1465.
Tempera