Renaissance Art, Lecture 2: The Botticelli Code

HCC Winter 09

NOTE: This is an image-driven lecture. These notes will make the most sense in conjunction with the PDF slide presentation. There is a pdf file with thumbnails of the major images for this lecture. You should also be able to view the images on ArtStor, a database accessible from any UCI computer. Go to Artstor.org, open the area called “Folders and Image Groups,” and find HCC: Botticelli. You may have to experiment with different browsers and you may need to modify your pop-up settings in order to use ArtStor effectively.

I. Introduction: Botticelli, Renaissance Maker

In the final section of his treatise, Alberti advises the painter to get a good education. There were no art schools during the Renaissance; painters learned their art by going into apprenticeship in the workshops or studios of established masters, just as tailors, weavers, and goldsmiths by becoming apprentices. Alberti assumes that painters will continue to be trained on the guild model, but he encourages artists to “associate” (hang out with) poets and humanists, so that they can develop more ambitious and sophisticated literary content (istoria) for their paintings. He writes:

“For their own enjoyment artists should associate with poets and orators who have many embellishments in common with painters and who have a broad knowledge of many things. These could be very useful in beautifully composing the istoria whose greatest praise consists in the invention.” (p. 90)

A good example of Alberti’s workshop-trained yet humanist-minded painter is SANDRO BOTTICELLI, 1444/45-1510.

Double Thesis: Botticelli the Maker

Like Shakespeare, Botticelli weaves together materials from classical poetry, popular festivals of spring, courtly celebration, and the art of rhetoric in order to create a multifaceted essay on love.

Like Shakespeare, Botticelli remains linked to a craft and guild tradition, while beginning to move his forms of making into the intellectual circles of poetry, rhetoric, and humanist scholarship. Like Shakespeare, Botticelli weaves together materials from classical poetry, popular festivals of spring, and courtly celebration in order to create a multifaceted picture of love.

Botticelli, like Shakespeare, was the son of a leather craftsman. Botticelli first studied goldsmithing with his brother Antonio, who was a master goldsmith – one of the highest paid and prestigious of the crafts during the period, because of the fine materials and the high level of skill, including an aptitude for sculpture and drawing, required to work it. Botticelli switched from goldsmithing to painting at the age of fourteen, when he joined the studio of Fra Filippo Lippi. Botticelli grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Florence dominated by the cloth industry, but his family moved to a more prosperous area and became neighbors of the Vespucci family (parents to Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator after whom America is named). The Vespuccis were highly literate; the father was a humanist; and they are the likely source of Botticelli’s intellectual exposure and his introduction to the humanist circle surrounding the ruling Medici family of Florence.

Botticelli is most famous for his mythological paintings, unprecedented in size, complexity and beauty when he painted them in the 1470 and 80s. He also, however, painted many works of religious art, which remained the standard subject matter of the period. (There were no museums – art work hung in churches, the urban palaces and country villas of wealthy nobles and merchants, and civic buildings.) Botticelli also created a beautiful set of drawings illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, which demonstrate his literary training and sensitivity, as well as the link between his art and the tradition of Italian vernacular poetry.

The painting we will discuss today is called the Primavera, (Springtime).

Botticelli painted it on a large piece of wood. It was originally designed to be set into the headboard of a lettucio or day bed, for display in a semi-public ground floor room of the principal residence of the Medici family, though it was later moved the residence of a lesser branch of the same family. Although the Primavera is now displayed as a framed painting on the wall of one of the world’s great museums (the Uffizi Gallery in Florence), it was originally conceived as part of the furnishings of a room. Many mythological paintings during the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) were done on panels of wood, and then inserted into the sides of elaborately carved wooden chests (called cassone) as wedding gifts to wealthy couples. It took awhile for patrons and artists to consider mythological subjects (as opposed to Bible stories) worthy of full-scale treatment as independent paintings – although Botticelli’s other famous mythological painting, The Birth of Venus, was painted on linen and probably hung alone on a wall.

The cassone or wedding chest tradition is important because:

> As a form of making, it exists between furniture and artwork (between craft and art).

> The long format encouraged a “comic book” narrative style.

> Cassone painting encouraged the development of secular subject matter, from classical myth, suitable for weddings, in a period when religious painting was dominant.

> Though classical themes were depicted on these wedding chests, they often employed a vernacular, “storybook” style. (Compare: Shakespeare’s “Athens,” which seems as English as it does Greek.)

II. Reading the Primavera (we will proceed from right to left)

a) First Grouping: the myth of Chloris

Young, beautiful, and dedicated to chastity, Chloris attracts the attention of the warm spring wind god, Zephyr, who falls in love with her. As he chases her, she runs away from him. Gradually, however, she warms up under his heated breath, and begins to return his affection, turning into the goddess Flora, who presides over the late or flowering spring. The ancient Romans celebrated Flora in a special May-time festival called the Floralia. The Floralia became part of Italian Mayday festivals, which bore the name “Calendimaggio” (Month of May). This festival was sometimes fused with Holy Week in order to neutralize its pagan origins. The poet Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, fell in love with Beatrice, his human muse and inspiration, during the Calendimaggio. The Primavera itself evokes not only the narrative sources of the Calendimaggio, but also contemporary festivals, as practiced by both the people of Florence and by the humanist court of the Medici family. These festival aspects include:

Ø the gowns of the female characters, which resemble the costumes, some with hand-painted flowers (see Flora’s dress), worn at pageants.

Ø The dancing of the 3 Graces, which borrows from contemporary dance steps.

Ø Flora’s bounteous strewing of flowers, as at a wedding of party.

Ø Venus’s gesture of welcome to us as guests at a party.

B) Venus

At the center of the painting is the goddess Venus. Botticelli famously depicted Venus in his masterpiece, The Birth of Venus.

Compare and contrast these two pictures of Venus. Which is more sensual? Which more maternal? What elements do the two paintings have in common?

Botticelli’s naked Venus represents the “birth” or early stages of sexual awakening and desire. Botticelli’s more matronly clothed Venus represents married love and the maturing of sexual desire. In both paintings, Botticelli is also developing the associations of Venus with the generative principles of nature as such (and not just the impulses of human sexuality). According to Greek myth, Chronos, the god of time, overcame his father Saturn, a sky god, by castrating him. When he threw the severed members of the sky god into the ocean, the spilled semen inseminated the ocean and led to the birth of the goddess of love, who arose out of the foaming waves and was blown to shore by the warm spring winds. Look for the foam on the ocean: these are the traces of the violent act that led to Venus’s watery conception.

b) The Three Graces

These women represent the 3 Graces, goddesses of social beauty and social grace in the classical period. They have been interpreted in various ways, for example as the trinity “Chastity,” “Desire,” and “Beauty.” Can you tell which is which?

The 3 Graces, however, have social as well as romantic meanings. Holding each other’s hands, they represent the chain of giving, called the virtue of “liberality” (generosity) in classical and Renaissance ethics. If I give something to someone, he or she will in turn give something to someone else, and eventually I will get something back. Giving is thus a chain that involves 3 persons, not just two. Look carefully at the dance of the 3 graces. How does Botticelli visualize it as a chain of giving? What role might these maidens play at a wedding party?

c) Mercury

The Roman god Mercury (equivalent to the Greek god Hermes) was the god of commerce, interpretation, and exchange. He was also the Leader of the 3 Graces. He was also associated with the spring time and, like Zephyr, he was a wind god.

In Botticelli’s painting, Mercury is looking out of the painting. (Do you think Alberti would have liked this?) Art historians have suggested that he is looking up into the heavens, contemplating philosophical truths and divine love. As the god of commerce and exchange, perhaps he is looking into the city of Florence, made wealthy by trade and banking.

If this is a wedding painting, what role might he play?

Look at the whole picture. Find Cupid, the naughty son of Venus. Whom do you think Cupid is aiming at?

IV. Conclusions

a) Look at the painting and find these different ideas in it:

Early erotic love and fear

Consummated sexuality

Mature married love

Cosmic or natural love

Social love; liberality / generosity; the chain of giving

Intellectual love

Civic love

Green spring

Flowering spring

Late spring

d) Would Alberti have liked Botticelli’s Primavera?

He would have appreciated the classical subject matter, the sense of movement in the hair and garments, the depiction of the human body, and the use of logos, ethos, and pathos, to tell a story and move the viewer.

He may have found the composition weak: too “comic-book like.” The painting is also very flat and tapestry-like, perhaps reflecting its original position on the wall behind a day bed. It was part of a piece of furniture as much as it was a work of art.

e) Compare Botticelli’s Primavera and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

(Wouldn’t this be a fabulous midterm essay question …?) You might consider the following points:

How are both the play and the painting connected to forms of celebration (wedding, holiday)?

How do both the play and the painting tell stories of metamorphosis?

How do both the play and the painting “weave” or “join” together several plots, traditions, and attitudes towards making?