THE PAGAN WORKS OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI
Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence in 1445 and he is remembered as one of the leading painters of the Florentine Renaissance. He was a prolific painter, including portraits, religious works, and subjects with allegorical-mythological themes.
Although a work of art's beauty may transcend time, it is not possible to analyze and understand it without considering the historical and cultural period in which it was created.
Renaissance Italy was divided into many states, some of which had great political power such as the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence, the Papal State, and the Kingdom of Naples. In the Republic of Florence, where Botticelli lived and worked, one of the most important families was the Medici family for whom the painter created several works. The most important protagonist of that period was Lorenzo de' Medici, known as Lorenzo il Magnifico (the Magnificent), who became lord of Florence in 1469 and brought the Florentine Renaissance into its most brilliant period.
At the time, the artist rarely decided himself what to depict, but the subject of the works was decided by his patron, a local lord, a powerful family or the Church, and those same works were not always shown to everyone but served to decorate churches, private chapels, the mansions of lords or served as gifts to other powerful families to celebrate marriages or political agreements. For example, the aforementioned Lorenzo de' Medici implemented a policy of cultural exchange with other Italian powers, and Botticelli, along with other artists, left for Rome to create frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. In fact, the Church of the time was no different from the other powers and their courts with all the political intrigues and illegitimate children, it had a very strong political and cultural clout and above all clearly visible, overt, and therefore it was to be treated like all other kingdoms by the other Italian kingdoms.
Lorenzo was a great diplomat and surrounded himself with a large group of diverse men who shaped the thinking of the time. With this group of artists and philosophers, Lorenzo revived the Neoplatonic Academy, which had come into being several decades earlier following the first Latin translations of Plato. According to the Neoplatonists during ancient times there was a single and true wisdom, or religion, common to every age and place ranging from Pythagoras to Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle, and so on given to humanity by God himself.
Botticelli lived fully in this cultural period and was its voice bearer. His two most famous works are the Primavera (the Spring) and La Nascita di Venere (the Birth of Venus). Although they were painted about five years apart these two paintings are to be analyzed together. Not only because they are thought to have been exhibited side by side at Villa di Castello, but also because they both depict Venus, known to us as Astarte. For the Neo-Platonists, the goddess Venus had a central symbolism in their thinking: she represented love and beauty, through which humanity could rise from the material realm to the spiritual one.
La Primavera (The Spring), 1480
La Primavera is the first painting with a mythological character that Botticelli painted and is imbued with allegorical meanings. It was created for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and this painting's affiliation with the de' Medici family is made clear by the setting in which the scene takes place, namely an orange grove laden with fruit. Oranges were one of the symbols of the family. There are many mythological figures in the painting, and the scene should be read from right to left, so a story begins to unfold whose meaning can be interpreted in one way thanks to Neoplatonic philosophy.
Venus stands in the center of the painting. Behind her is drawn a myrtle, her sacred plant, and above her is her son Cupid, god of love. Both are symbolic of the love that drives humanity to betterment.
The three figures on the right interpret a myth. The blue-skinned god Zephyrus embraces the nymph Clori who has flowers sprouting from her mouth, transforming her into Flora, the very representation of spring and here the third figure in this scene; a woman whose dress is richly decorated with flowers. They thus represent an earthly and not spiritual humanity, but it's not wrong because it is the source of life (Flora).
This human act is mediated by the figure of Venus and is transformed into the dance of the three Graces. In this picture, the three Graces embody three concepts of Neoplatonism: beauty, chastity (understood differently than today), and desire. From above Venus, Cupid is about to shoot his arrow at them, a symbol of change. The three Graces are engaged in a dance that depicts the basic principle of love, according to Seneca, that is,
giving,
receiving, and
returning, which filtered through the Neoplatonic perspective means that God
gives, the soul
receives, awakens and
returns to him, that is, reaches out to a spiritual world. Just replace the word “God” with Satan and this picture immediately becomes an important allegory for the journey our soul takes.
Finally, there is Mercury, the leftmost and loneliest figure in the painting. He is looking upward and is chasing away clouds with his caduceus, creating a clear sky of soul awareness. He is the messenger of the gods and also one of the transporters of souls to the afterlife. So Mercury transports the soul, now transformed, out of the picture and upward.
This then is a painting about the journey that the human soul undertakes aided by the love and beauty of Venus to move from the sensual love and materiality of Zephyr, Chloris and Flora to the spiritual values of the dance of the three Graces and then to ultimate enlightenment with Mercury.
La Nascita di Venere (Birth of Venus), 1485
This painting also depicts Venus, but in a different form than the previous painting. Here she is naked and it's one of the first times a human figure is depicted naked without a trace of shame. Previously it was allowed only to Eve and only because it was connected to the feeling of shame felt by her. Venus, on the other hand, has a relaxed attitude, barely and delicately covering herself, and has become the perfect idea of female beauty in the art world.
The painting follows the mythological story in which Venus is born already an adult woman and reaches the island of Cyprus aboard a shell, propelled by the wind Zephyrus, in the pose of the Venus Pudica typical of Hellenistic sculptures.
Zephyrus, as in the previous painting, is depicted with blue skin and embraced by the nymph Clori. On the other side is a nymph, or the goddess Flora, who hands Venus a cloak to protect her from the weather.
Venus here is an allegory based on the Neoplatonic concept of love as the life-giving and life-moving energy of the natural world, and her birth from water and nudity have a spiritual, non-sensual character that is meant to celebrate true beauty. Botticelli shared the classical idea that beauty was the sole purpose of art.
Neoplatonists followed the thought of Plato who divided Venus into two figures: the celestial Venus and the terrestrial Venus. The former represented love as an intellectual feeling, while the latter represented a more physical love. However, physical beauty was a way to attain spiritual beauty, and for the Neoplatonists, it was the way love is manifested in the earthly world.
One cannot be sure which Venus is which in the Spring and the Birth.
Because of her nakedness, it is thought that the Venus of the Birth is the spiritual one whose beauty inspired those who looked at her to spiritual elevation, while the Venus of the Spring is the more earthly one.
Here, too, the commission of the Medici family is emphasized by the presence of an orange grove in the background.
Pallade e il Centauro (Pallas and the Centaur), 1482-84
This is another painting closely related to the Neoplatonic philosophy of the time. The woman is Pallas or the goddess Minerva, goddess of wisdom and reason, armed and dressed in a gown that features a decoration of intertwined rings, another symbol of the Medici family.
The goddess admonitively clutches the tufts of hair of a centaur, a symbol of a half-human, half-beast man. This centaur, following Plato's philosophy, becomes the bearer of humanity in perpetual conflict between its lowest and highest instincts, matter and the divine. It is man's task to rise from material life to true spirituality. With her hand and presence Minerva, the reason, helps and guides humanity on this path and keeps it in check, for it's easy to indulge in the passions and irrationality present in humanity and lose the way.
Venere e Marte (Venus and Mars), 1482-83
This work was probably commissioned by the Vespucci family, another important Italian family, given the presence of wasps in the upper left-hand corner (wasps = vespe in Italian), for a wedding given the form that frames it as an espalier, a type of painting intended for the antechamber in the house of the bride and groom.
We find Venus again, watching the god Mars abandoned in deep sleep while around them little satyrs play with the god's weapons. For the Neoplatonists, there was a harmony of opposites represented by the dualism of Venus and Mars, Love and War, in which, however, Venus had the superiority as a symbol of love and concord that keeps hatred and discord in check.
Having been a painting dedicated to a wedding it can also be seen as an augury towards the bride where the woman represents a force that succeeds in pacifying man's warlike energies while maintaining a state of balance, an interpretation aided by the symmetry of the scene.
The scene itself, is light and cheerful; historical sources describe Botticelli as a man who loved jokes.
These were the only paintings with mythological and spiritual themes that Botticelli created that we know of, and the motivation must be sought in the changes that came at the end of the century.
A friar arrived in Florence, Girolamo Savonarola, a strong preacher who railed against the corruption of customs, vanity, and vices he saw and called for a return to a time of strong and repressive religiosity. Neoplatonism, with its love of pagan times and philosophies, also ended up in his crosshairs. Taking advantage of a period of uncertainty because Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1492, the discovery of America, and Charles VIII's descent into Italy, Savonarola seized power in Florence and established a theocratic regime. The period of splendor came to an end. Savonarola organized bonfires of vanities in which he burned everything he considered sinful seized from Florentine homes. Clothes, makeup, jewelry, books, musical instruments, and works of art.
Botticelli himself was deeply affected by the sermons he had heard from the friar, and a deep disturbance and sense of guilt arose in him that led him to a crisis and to disavow what he had created, returning to works of a religious character, though more somber and rigid than the previous ones he painted.
On February 7, 1497, Savonarola lit the largest bonfire of vanities in which Botticelli and other artists burned some of their works that were not in line with the thinking that had been established. After this bonfire, however, Savonarola lost acceptance from both the common people and the Church, which he strongly criticized. He was excommunicated and a year later was burned at the stake in the same spot as the bonfire of the vanities.
Botticelli continued to work for several years, but gradually his fame began to wane. His last painting was in 1501. He died in 1510 alone and in poverty.
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