Fig. 134. Botticelli. St. Augustine. Fresco.—Ognissanti.
Fig. 135. Botticelli. Madonna with six Angels.—Uffizi.
There are rare moments of something like serenity in Botticelli’s troubled career. One was when he painted the Pallas and the Centaur, and another when he designed the loveliest of his round panels, the Madonna with Six Angels, in the Uffizi, Figure [135]. Unlike the more famous and popular Magnificat, it is in immaculate preservation. The composition is subtler and less obvious, the worn and burdened look of the Madonna oppressed by her tragic fate, more specific and appealing. The late Herbert P. Horne, Botticelli’s best biographer, sets the picture about 1487. About the same time were done those nuptial frescoes for Lorenzo Tornabuoni and his bride, Giovanna degli Albizzi. Torn from the villa walls at Careggi, they are now among the treasures of the Louvre. Lorenzo is represented as received by the seven liberal arts, Giovanna as presented to Venus by the Graces. We have seen in the last chapter how these young people shared and illustrated the doom impending over Medicean Florence. Botticelli captures, if not their look, at least a fine symbol for their as yet unchallenged beauty and discretion.
Fig. 136. Botticelli. Birth of Venus.—Uffizi.
A little earlier perhaps he added to the Primavera at Castello the Birth of Venus, Figure [136]. It is conceived in the same bold rhythms, which this time converge on the slight, smooth form of Venus and are steadied by the horizon and the trees. Compared with the Primavera, the whole thing is less rich, varied and naturalistic. Everything is more schematic and conventional; gold is freely used without realistic pretext. The wistful mood is still that of the Primavera. Venus comes to earth with no joyous expectation. She glimpses unfulfilled desires, the eternally deferred goal of earthly love. She obeys a destiny with resignation and a pensive humility—almost asks pardon for the confusion she is fated to produce among mortals. These involutions and refinements have nothing to do with the whole-souled sensuousness of classical antiquity, they have everything to do with that scrupulous balancing of divine and earthly love which was the standing problem of the Neo-Platonists surrounding Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Fig. 137. Botticelli. Dante and Beatrice in Paradise.—Print Room, Berlin.
During the ’80s Botticelli was much occupied with the illustration of a great manuscript of the “Divine Comedy.” Figure [137]. These outlines in silverpoint retouched with the pen find their equals only in the best Far Eastern art. The line whips and dances and swirls across the parchment, halting and turning to define a detail, then speeding anew on its task of suggesting motion. Figures that float, groups that march or dance as one, trailing smoke of incense—these volatile features are rendered with the most energetic delicacy. And the most incredible episodes of Dante’s poem gain credence with the eye through the deftest use of the pure line. It hardens to suggest bone and sinew, tightens to express joints that bear weight and preserve balance, loosens and gallops to give the flutter of drapery over twinkling limbs. And all this is done with a thin pen line that hardly changes thickness or blackness—done with a touch as light as a feather and yet as firm as the swing of a draughtsman’s compass. The study of such drawings is a liberal education in the æsthetics of pure line.