THE BIRTH OF VENUS
By Sandro Botticelli. Uffizi Gallery
Anderson
In the Calumny you see a picture painted from the description Alberti had given in his treatise on painting of the work of Apelles. "There was in this picture," says Alberti, "a man with very large ears, and beside him stood two women; one was called Ignorance, the other Superstition. Towards him came Calumny. This was a woman very beautiful to look upon, but with a double countenance (ma parea nel viso troppo astuta). She held in her right hand a lighted torch, and with the other hand she dragged by the hair a young man (uno garzonotto), who lifted his hands towards heaven. There was also a man, pale, brutto, and gross, ... he was guide to Calumny, and was called Envy. Two other women accompanied Calumny, and arranged her hair and her ornaments, and one was Perfidy and the other Fraud. Behind them came Penitence, a woman dressed in mourning, all ragged. She was followed by a girl, modest and sensitive, called Truth." [ [121] ]
The Birth of Venus was the first study of the nude that any painter had dared to paint; but profound as is its significance, Florentine painting was moving forward by means less personal than the genius, the great personal art of Botticelli. Here in the Uffizi you may see an Annunciation (56) of Baldovinetti (1427-99), in which something of that strangeness and beauty of landscape which owed much to Angelico, and more perhaps in its contrivance to Paolo Uccello, was to come to such splendour in the work of Verrocchio and Leonardo. Baldovinetti's pupil, Piero Pollaiuoli (1443-96), the younger brother of Antonio (1429-98), whose work in sculpture is so full of life, was, with his brother's help and guidance, giving to painting some of the power and reality of movement which we look for in vain till his time. In a picture of St. James, with St. Vincent and St. Eustace on either side (1301), you may see Piero's work, the fine, rather powerful than beautiful people he loved. It is, however, in the work of one whom he influenced, Andrea Verrocchio, the pupil of Donatello and Baldovinetti, that, as it seems to me, what was best worth having in his work comes to its own, expressed with a real genius that is always passionate and really expressive. The Baptism in the Accademia, a beautiful but not very charming work, perhaps of his old age, received, Vasari tells us, some touches from the brush of Leonardo, and for long the Annunciation of the Uffizi (1286) passed as Leonardo's work. Repainted though it is, in almost every part (the angel's wings retain something of their original brightness), this Annunciation remains one of the loveliest pictures in the gallery, full of the eagerness and ardour of Verrocchio. In a garden at sunset, behind the curiously trimmed cypresses under a portico of marble, Madonna sits at her prie dieu, a marvellously carved sarcophagus of marble, while before her Gabriel kneels, holding the lilies, lifting his right hand in blessing. The picture comes from the Church of Monte Oliveto, not far away.
THE ANNUNCIATION
By Andrea Verrocchio, Uffizi Gallery