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Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder
c. 1474
Tempera on panel, 57,5 x 44 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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Devotional
paintings
("Adoration of the
Magi")
Botticelli worked in all the
current genres of Florentine art. He painted altarpieces in fresco
and on panel, tondi (circular paintings), small panel pictures, and
small devotional triptychs. His altarpieces include narrow vertical
panels such as the "St. Sebastian"
(1474; Berlin); small oblong panels such as the famous
"Adoration of the Magi"
(c. 1476; Uffizi) from the Church of Santa Maria Novella;
medium-sized altarpieces, of which the finest is the beautiful
Bardi altarpiece
(1484-85; Berlin); and large-scale works such as the
St. Barnabas altarpiece
(c. 1488; Uffizi) and the "Coronation of
the Virgin" (c.
1490; Uffizi). His early mastery of fresco is clearly visible in his
"St. Augustine"
(1480) in the Church of Ognissanti, in which the saint's
cogent energy and vigour express both intellectual power and
spiritual devotion. Three of Botticelli's finest religious frescos
(completed 1482) were part of the decorations of the
Sistine Chapel
undertaken by a team of Florentine and Umbrian artists who had been
summoned to Rome in July 1481. The theological themes of the frescos
were chosen to illustrate papal supremacy over the church;
Botticelli's are remarkable for their brilliant fusion of sequences
of symbolic episodes into unitary compositions.
Florentine tondi were often large,
richly framed paintings, and Botticelli produced major works in this
format, beginning with the "Adoration of the
Magi" (c. 1473;
National Gallery, London) that he painted for Antonio Pucci. Prior
to Botticelli, tondi had been conceived essentially as oblong
scenes, but Botticelli suppressed all superfluity of detail in them
and became adept at harmonizing his figures with the circular form.
His complete mastery of the tondo format is evident in two of his
most beautiful paintings, "The Madonna of the
Magnificat" (c.
1485; Uffizi) and "The Madonna of the
Pomegranate" (c.
1487; Uffizi). Botticelli also painted a few small oblong Madonnas,
notably the "Madonna of the Book"
(c. 1480; Poldi-Pezzoli Museum, Milan), but he mostly left
the painting of Madonnas and other devotional subjects to his
workshop, which produced them in great numbers. In his art the
Virgin Mary is always a tall, queenly figure wearing the
conventional red robe and blue cloak, but enriched in his autograph
works by sensitively rendered accessories. She often has an inner
pensiveness of expression, the same inwardness of mood that is
communicated by Botticelli's saints.
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St Sebastian (detail)
1474
Tempera on panel, 195 x 75 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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St Sebastian
1474
Tempera on panel, 195 x 75 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
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THE MAGI
The Gospels speak of
wise men from the east
coming to Bethlehem,
led by a star, when
Christ was born. In the
2nd century these wise
men (Latin: magi)
became the subject of
popular legends. They
were thought to be
kings, names were
invented for them, and
they were depicted as
representing the three
ages of man (youth,
maturity, and old age).
One was usually black,
personifying Africa. By
the 16th century, the
Magi had acquired
royal retinues, often
including the family of
the painter's patron.
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... Botticelli accepted that paganism, too, was a
religion and could bear profoundly philosophical
significance. His religious paintings manifest this belief
by converging all truths into one.
He seems to have had a personal devotion to the biblical
account of The Adoration of The Magi , setting
it in a ruined classical world. This was not an uncommon
Renaissance device, suggesting that the birth of Christ
brought fulfillment to the hopes of everyone, completing the
achievements of the past.
But no painter felt this with the intensity of Botticelli.
We feel that he desperately needed this psychic reassurance,
and that the wild graphic power of his Adoration's
great circles of activity, coming to rest on the still
center of the Virgin and her Child, made visible his own
interior circlings. Even the far green hills sway in
sympathy with the clustered humans as if by magnetic
attraction around the incarnate Lord.
Botticelli was not the only Florentine to be blessed or
afflicted by an intensely anxious temperament. In the 1490s,
the city of Florence was overtaken by a political crisis.
The Medici government fell, and there followed a four-year
period of extremist religious rule under the zealot
Savonarola . Either in response to this, or possibly out of
some desire of his own for stylistic experimentation,
Botticelli produced a series of rather clumsy-looking
religious works - the San Bernabo Altarpiece
is an example.
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Adoration of the Magi
1465-67
Tempera on panel, 50 x 136 cm
National Gallery, London
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Adoration of the Magi (detail)
1465-67
Tempera on panel
National Gallery, London
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Adoration of the Magi
1470-75
Tempera on panel, diameter 131,5 cm
National Gallery, London
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Adoration of the Magi
c. 1475
Tempera on panel, 111 x 134 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Adoration of the Magi (detail)
c. 1475
Tempera on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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