III
We must turn to the principal pictures in Botticelli's other, and as I think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which exist between the two groups.
The first of these is the "Calumny," painted to the description given in Alberti's Treatise on Painting of a picture by Apelles. It is a comparatively small panel, 2 feet by 3, containing ten figures, and an elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered with friezes and bas-reliefs. It belongs to Sandro's later years, and is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence. One can hardly look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of Innocence, with crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the ladylike Calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive. Their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of Truth, standing on the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven. She is intimately related to the figure of Venus Anadyomene—but here she seems tragically out of place. The fancy lavished upon the bas-reliefs bears witness to Sandro's whimsical imagination even in the midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when Florence was full of the false spirit suggested in this panel.
With the "Calumny" I must mention, though only in passing, the several panels of the life of Saint Zenobius, two of which are in the collection of Mrs. Ludwig Mond. Less theatrical, but often more violent in manner than the "Calumny," and not less definitely of the genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour, geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white. These, with the illustrative panels from the stories of Virginia and Lucretia, were probably painted after 1490, for wedding chests.
A more important group of pictures comprises the six—including the "Adoration" already described—which centre in the three figures of the Holy Family, whether they be called Adorations or Nativities; and the Sixtine frescoes. All these pictures are full of figures, most of them are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge Leonardo's assertion that Botticelli was indifferent to this part of his art. The two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid "Adoration"—the "Adoration" now in St. Petersburg, and the "Scenes from the Life of Moses" in the Sixtine Chapel, were painted about the same time in Rome. In the former, the Holy Family is housed, as in the tondo in the National Gallery, under a wooden shed erected between the ruined pillars of an older order, a temple or perhaps a palace of kings. It contains some forty figures, besides horses, which Sandro loved to introduce, not always very successfully, into his pictures. Too often, like the charger of Holofernes, they are studied not from life, but from some other model: occasionally, as for example in the Medicean "Adoration," one recognises the real creature. This St. Petersburg "Adoration" is broadly conceived, and full of interest, but it suffers from that conscious and obvious emotion which belongs to Sandro's inferior work. In his best, his figures are pure creations, certain of their purpose, confident of conveying a sense of beauty transcending mere subject-interest; they are not "lifelike," they are ideas and symbols of life, and therefore able to convey the spiritual contact of living forms. This is not the case in any of the Adorations I am describing, nor is it in any of the Sixtine frescoes if we except that of "Moses at the Well."
PLATE VII.—THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL. (From the panel in the National Gallery)
This beautiful painting is no longer ascribed to Botticelli; but it is obviously an indirect, if not a direct, product of his genius. The Virgin is distinct in type from those of the master, and the painting of the Child is dissimilar. The name of Giuliano da San Gallo, one of Sandro's friends, and a famous Florentine architect, is written across the back of the picture.
But in this marvellous central scene of a large fresco, the very sheep are so intensely realised as to have an individuality over and above their mere sheepiness. By the well, under the great oak tree of the Papal (Rovere) family, Moses is pouring water into the troughs for Zipporah and her sister. His long luxuriant hair falls about a sensitive face. Behind and below him are the sheep, so woolly that you can in fancy pass your hand over their fleeces. On the opposite side of the well are the two Midianitish maidens, standing out, the bright central motive of the whole design; one with her back turned and hands extended, the other walking in a sort of dream, her head drooping forward under the long thick locks of its heavy hair. A skin full of fruit is slung round her waist, and a distaff is in her hand. About this group, whose lines follow those of the well-mouth, the painter has contrived to introduce half-a-dozen other incidents from Moses' life. It was of the little terrier in this picture that Ruskin wrote: "Without any doubt I can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the world—so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's Lord Chancellor Poodle." He is sure that the dog has been barking all the morning at Moses.
I quote this because it is almost the only passage of Ruskin's which is true to Botticelli's work. Sandro's "Venus" is a creative spirit, she is not a mere individual, but a living Platonic Idea; and through his power of realisation, this little terrier, a mere accessory in the foreground of a great fresco filled with details, has a life of its own. Thus, at its best, his work is not representation at all, nor mere illustration; it is the re-creation in a new medium of the creatures and ideas he has conceived, even to their least characteristics.
The two other Sixtine frescoes represent the "Punishment of Korah," painted in celebration of the revolt and suicide of the Archbishop of Krain; and that known either as the "Leper's Offering," or the "Temptation of Christ," which was also intended to flatter the sensibilities of the Pope.