Botticelli and his Florence

Florence - With the exception of two visits, to Pisa in 1474, and to Rome between 1481 and 1482, throughout his life Sandro Botticelli remained faithful to his home town, Florence. His choice is easily explained if one recalls that in the XV century Florence was the capital of art and the centre of Italian culture.
The city was well aware of the exceptional creativity of its artists: Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Pollaiolo, Ghirlandaio, Piero della Francesca, Filippino Lippi and Leonardo da Vinci, and of the legendary "Florentine genius", they had created.

Botticelli's Florence was the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici and Girolamo Savonarola. Politically, the Republican spirit of an oligarchy of wealthy merchants went to the advantage of one family and its allies, but was in no way suffocated. The contempt for the corrupt and worldly clergy did not exclude fervent devotion which, albeit affected, reflects on the exuberant naturalism of Florentine art, like the temporal clamour of myth, legend and love of ceremony.

Botticelli's Florence was the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici and Girolamo Savonarola. Politically, the Republican spirit of an oligarchy of wealthy merchants went to the advantage of one family and its allies, but was in no way suffocated. The contempt for the corrupt and worldly clergy did not exclude fervent devotion which, albeit affected, reflects on the exuberant naturalism of Florentine art, like the temporal clamour of myth, legend and love of ceremony.

In his book La Civiltà del Rinascimento in Italia, Jacob Burckhardt (1818 -1897) explains that in Florence "social life was influenced by literature and politics. Lorenzo the Magnificent was first and foremost a personality who completely dominated his entourage, not, as one might think, by virtue of his princely status, but because of his natural qualities. He was the absolute master of his domain, because he allowed complete freedom to men who were so widely different from each other".

Botticelli's father, Mariano, was a tanner whose wife, Smeralda, bore him at least eight children. Only four sons survived, Giovanni, Antonio, Simone and the youngest, Alessandro. In 1433 Mariano bought a house in Borgo Ognissanti (still today the street is known by this name) populated by craftsmen and workers in the textile industry, a speciality in Florence. After a period of prosperity, around 1485, the Filipepi family (this was Botticelli's real surname) moved to the centre of the town, in via della Vigna Nuova, dominated by the Rucellai family, for whom Leon Battista Alberti had built a splendid palace. Mariano become a friend and protégé of the family's most influential member, Giovanni Rucellai. A great merchant and banker, man of letters and politician, he was. the perfect incarnation of Florentine power and so wealthy that at that time he owned almost a third of the city.

The Florentines were formidable businessmen and politicians. Years later, in his work Trattato sul governo di Firenze, Savonarola showed how well aware he was of it. These people, he wrote, are not only some of the most ingenious and shrewd to be found in commerce, but also determined and bold like no others and are even to be feared when they attack in war, particularly civil war. In Cronica fiorentina of 1492, Benedetto Dei provided some accurate figures on the city: 70 thousand inhabitants, 270 wool mills , 83 silk factories, 33 banks, 84 wood-carvers and 54 stone-cutters and sculptors, 66 apothecaries, 70 butchers, 8 poulterers, 30 spun silver and gold foundries, 44 goldsmiths, silversmiths and jewellers. A list that photographed the variety of the Florentine economy.

Young Sandro made poor progress at school which prompted Mariano, in 1458, to take him away and apprentice him to a goldsmith. The boy thus learned the three main techniques of the trade, engraving, chasing and enamelling. At that time goldsmiths were held in high regard for the category included masters such as Ghiberti, Michelozzo, Verrocchio and Pollaiolo. Pollaiolo's workshop also made liturgical objects: brocades, sculptures, paintings, prints. Antonio, one of Botticelli's brothers, was also a goldsmith until 1467 when he decided to specialize in laminating gold for painters and miniaturists. What interested the Florentines was the craftsman's skill and quality. An artist first of all had to prove his mastery of the art, after which he had to be flexible in order to satisfy demand and adapt his style

Botticelli entered as an assistant in the workshop of Filippo Lippi, one of the most highly favoured artists (and well protected by the Medici family), whose reputation went far beyond Florentine circles. Botticelli stayed with him for three years after joining the workshop in 1464, the year in which Piero de Medici succeeded his father. In 1469, Lorenzo the Magnificent took over rule of Florence and in the same the year Filippo Lippi died.

Before passing on, the friar entrusted his fifteen year old son Filippino to Botticelli. Filippino was Botticelli's first pupil when he opened his workshop in 1470. That same year, commissioned by the Tribunale del Commercio, he painted the figure of Fortitude which, after a series of early works, beautiful Madonnas and some early Adoration of the Magi, the Discovery of the body of Holofernes and the Return of Judith. contributed to heighten his reputation.

In the preface of Summa de Aritmetica, Geometrica, Proporzioni et Proportionalita (Venice, 1494) brother Luca Pacioli, mathematician and theoretician of the perspective that influenced Piero della Francesca, ranked Botticelli as the finest Florentine painter and included him in a list, together with Filippino, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Signorelli, of Italians "who know how to develop their works so well, by proportioning them with compass and square, that to our eyes they appear no longer human, but divine and lacking merely a breath of life".

In 1472 Botticelli and Filippino joined the Compagnia di San Luca, patron of the painters guild. Meanwhile, his father had bought a house in Via Nuova where Botticelli lived and worked for the next twenty-five years, until 1494. In other words, he stayed at home with his family, even foregoing the idea of marriage. An eloquent anecdote was recounted about a well-known person in Florence, who one day thought he would encourage the painter to marry. "I'll tell you what happened one of these nights", replied Botticelli. "I was dreaming that I had got married and such was my despair that I woke up. Rather than repeat the same dream, I got up and walked the streets all night like a madman".

In via Nuova Botticelli became acquainted with the Vespucci family, influential members of the district, and diehard partisans of the Medici family. From then on he worked regularly for them. In 1475, for a tournament held in Santa Croce, he painted the ensign for Giuliano de Medici who three years later fell victim to a plot woven by pope Sixtus IV and the Pazzi family. This convinced Botticelli definitively to embrace the Medici cause and on the façade of Palazzo della Signoria he portrayed the conspirators on the scaffold. Lorenzo the Magnificent, who ruled over Florence until his death in 1492, was his patron and secured him many public assignments. At that time, in fact, it was usual to commission frescoes and paintings to decorate churches, palaces and houses, although not yet for collection purposes.

Botticelli and his workshop enjoyed a period of prosperity with many pupils and assistants. The Adorazione dei Magi, which he executed in 1475 for the funeral chapel of Gaspare di Zanobi Del Lama earned him the wholehearted admiration of his fellow citizens. Cosimo de Medici and his sons Piero and Giovanni, all of whom were dead, were portrayed dressed as the three Magi, while Lorenzo and Giuliano were depicted as princes or high-ranking personages. On the right of the painting, easily visible because of his clothes and appearance, a self-portrait of Botticelli looks out from the picture. This painting marks the end of the artist's first period of life and work.

When Sixtus IV and Florence made peace on 3 December 1480, Botticelli and two other Florentine masters, Cosimo Rosselli and Ghirlandaio, were called to Rome with their Umbrian colleague, Perugino, to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. This consolidated his fame and when he returned to Florence in May 1482, he relished the moment of glory and was inundated with offers of work. His great profane paintings date from the 'eighties. The Allegory of Spring, the Birth of Venus, Pallas and the Centaur, Mars and Venus. Commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici around 1490, he began to illustrate the Divine Comedy, which was cult literature at that time in Florence.

The city spent the years under Savonarola's influence in the throes of a critical political and religious crisis. Nonetheless, a work by Ghirlandaio carried the following Latin inscription: "In 1490, the year in which this marvellous city - famed for its power, arts and palaces - rejoiced over its great prosperity, health and peace".

Between 1490 and 1495, Botticelli executed numerous religious subjects and great paintings for palaces (Story of Lucretia, Stories of Virginia, Scenes from the life of St. Zanobi). He still lived in Via Nuova. His brother Simone had become a follower of Savonarola and kept a chronicle of events, now a precious record for understanding the rise and fall of the Domenican friar. For the friar, the city was a place of turpitude and violence, a den of scoundrels. Botticelli was suspected of sharing his ideas, but the truth of the accusation was never brought to light.

At the end of 1504, (year of Filippino's death) Botticelli had the impression, shared by his fellow citizens, that he was living a second Apocalypse, after the announcement of another invasion by a new French king, this time Luigi XII. After six years of infirmity and no longer able to paint, he died in March 1510.

Back

Press Office

Catola & Partners
Via degli Artisti 15 B 50132 Firenze
Tel 055.5522867 - 5522892 - 5354112 Fax 055.5534865
r.catola@flashnet.it