1126. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.
Botticelli (Florentine: 1447-1510). See 1034.
See also (p. xx)
A picture with an interesting history. It was painted by Botticelli[217] when he was a young man, for Matteo Palmieri (a prominent Florentine citizen). This Matteo and his wife are here represented on either side of the tomb in the foreground. The patron assisted Botticelli in working out the design; and between them they made some modifications in theology, which brought them into trouble—so early did Sandro's reforming work begin. The story is thus told, and the picture described, by Vasari:—
"In the church of San Pietro (Florence) the master painted a picture for Matteo Palmieri with a very large number of figures. The subject of this work, which is near the side-door, is the Assumption of Our Lady, and the zones or circles of heaven are there painted in their order. The Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, the Virgins, and the Hierarchies; all which was executed by Sandro according to the design furnished to him by Matteo, who was a very learned and able man. The whole work was conducted and finished with the most admirable skill and care; at the foot of it was the portrait of Matteo kneeling, with that of his wife. But although the picture is exceedingly beautiful and ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to the work, declared that Matteo and Sandro had erred gravely in that matter, and had fallen into grievous heresy. Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment of that question from me; it shall suffice me to note that the figures executed by Sandro in that work are entirely worthy of praise, and that the pains he took in depicting those circles of the heavens must have been very great, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, or of the various foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very good manner" (ii. 233).
Matteo Palmieri was the author of a poem called "The City of Life,"[218] in which he adopted Origen's thesis that the human race was an incarnation of those angels who in the revolt of Lucifer were neither for God nor for his enemies, and explained how the soul of man could work its way back through the spheres to the very seat of deity. This "heresy" interprets (says Mr. Pater) much of the peculiar sentiment with which Botticelli infuses his profane and sacred persons,—neither all human, nor all divine (see above under 275). It was ingeniously suggested, as we shall see, in this picture, and was entirely in accord with those "Neo-Platonic" ideas in which Botticelli, as a member of the Medici circle, was well versed. Matteo seems to have been afraid that his poem might bring him into trouble owing to its heretical views on the nature of angels, for he presented his MS. to the Art of the Notaries in Florence, sealed and under the express condition that it should not be opened, "so long as he lived imprisoned in this body." He died in 1478, and his poem fell under the expected censure. Botticelli's picture, as Vasari says, shared this fate. The painting bears evidence of intentional injury, the faces of the donor and his wife having been scored through; nor did some of the apostles escape the wrath of these iconoclasts. Attempts at restoration were made at some subsequent period. As the portrait of a heretic might not be exhibited in a Roman Catholic church, the picture was covered up, and the chapel in which it stood was closed to public worship. Ultimately the book was declared innocuous, and the chapel was re-opened. The picture, however, had already been, or was afterwards, removed from the family chapel of the Palmieri to their villa. On the death of the last heir, it passed into the hands of a Florentine dealer who sold it to the 11th Duke of Hamilton. At the disposal of the Hamilton Collection in 1882 it was bought for the National Gallery.
The picture was doubtless designed as an illustration of the closing canto of "The City of Life," in which Matteo supposes himself conducted by the Cumæan Sibyl through the Elysian Fields to Heaven. The ostensible subject is the Assumption into Heaven of the Virgin. On earth the apostles are represented gathered around the Virgin's tomb, from which "annunciation lilies" are growing; while she is in heaven kneeling in adoration before the Saviour, who has an open book inscribed with the mystic letters Α and Ω: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." Around the Virgin and Christ are all the hierarchies of heaven, arranged, according to the scheme of the theologians, in three separate tiers. Nearest to Christ are the seraphs (red), cherubs (blue), and thrones (gold); these are conceived as absorbed in perpetual love and adoration round the throne of God, and are represented therefore as with heads only (the attribute of spirit) and wings ("swift as thought"). In relation with mankind come the remaining orders—the dominations, virtues, powers (these last with sceptres in their hands), and in the lowest of the three, tiers, archangels, princedoms, and angels (with their wands). "The black vases with golden borders in the hands of some of the angels are probably meant for the 'golden vials full of the wrath of God' (Revelations xv. 7). Near them there are other angels, who in the attitude of expectation point upward with their sticks; while those in the lowest circle point down, and at the same time seem to invite those who hold vials to pour them out upon the city of Florence" (Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 28). Everywhere amongst the angelic host are the blessed dead, and it is here that the views of Matteo's poem found expression. We have seen in Botticelli's "Nativity" (1034) the same intercourse of men and angels, with reference there to the reconciling power of the "Logos." Among the cherubs, we may decipher St. James with the pilgrim staff, St. Andrew with his cross, St. Peter with the key, and St. Mary Magdalen with the casket. It is interesting to note Botticelli's estimate of degrees in the scale of spiritual excellence. For instance, St. Catherine of Siena is in the lowest ring among the Angels, but St. Bernard is in the third with Principalities; Moses is among Powers, so are St. Lawrence, St. Stephen, and St. Catherine of Alexandria; Virtues hold St. Bonaventura, St. Dominic, and St. Paul; St. Francis with the Evangelists is higher, in Dominations; in the highest Triplicitie, as Spenser puts it, there are men—including the Baptist—mingled with the Cherubim. The angels are represented throughout as ministering spirits; and nothing in the picture is prettier than the way in which the angels are calling upon the saints to "enter into the joy of their Lord"; note, for instance, the white angel on the right in the lowest tier, and the saint in black and red. She will teach to him
The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know.
D. G. Rossetti: The Blessed Damozel.
There are many charming single figures; note, for instance, two angels in the lower tier in the centre; and all are characteristic of the new type of angels which Botticelli introduced—forsaking entirely the conventional idealism of earlier religious art, and substituting the waving garments and flowing hair (suggestive of atmosphere and swiftness of motion) which we see in Perugino and Raphael.
Finally, the picture is of topographical interest for the beautiful view of Florence and the Val d' Arno in the background—
The valley beneath where, white and wide
And washed by the morning water-gold,
Florence lay out on the mountain-side.
Browning: Old Pictures in Florence.
The precise point of view has been identified by Miss Margaret Stokes in her Six Months in the Apennines, pp. 261-264. Turning off the high road, on the descent from the hill of Fiesole—
"I got among the lanes on Monte Rinaldi near La Lastra, on the Via Bolognese, and soon found myself among the ruined terraces of an ancient garden, where cactus and aloe grew side by side with brambles, periwinkles, and ivy. Having reached an open in the thicket into which I had strayed, I was startled to see the very scene represented by Botticelli about the year 1455 lying at my feet—the wide horizon reaching from San Domenico, and the Apennines beyond Monte Moro, Scala, and Monte Maggio, round the whole Val d' Arno, to San Lorenzo and the northern boundary of Florence. Seated on the same mountain side, where the great painter must have sat four hundred and thirty years ago, and holding my little copy of his landscape in my hand, it was intensely interesting to trace the objects still remaining on which his eye had rested, and which his conscientious pencil had outlined, and to note the changes wrought by time in the aspect of the scene."
Miss Stokes prints side by side with her copy of Botticelli's background a topographical plan of the present scene. The house on the hill above the Mugnone beyond the bridge is the Villa Palmieri, where Queen Victoria stayed in 1888. Boccaccio selected it for one of the homes of his fair storytellers in the Decameron. Matteo Palmieri bought it in 1450. There, no doubt, Botticelli was often a guest, and there the two friends may have planned this great altar-piece. "It is perfectly in keeping with the poetic instincts of sacred painters of the time that this great vision of Heaven should be represented as bursting on the poet in his own very home. Gazing upwards from his cypress groves into the unfathomable blue above, it is as if the sky had slowly opened, and the interior of a vast dome were revealed, rising above three iridescent bands of light, peopled with nine successive zones of sacred forms, all gazing in absorbed ecstasy on the figure of the Divine Mother, lowliest of women, kneeling at the feet of the Redeemer" (pp. 261-264).