Читать книгу Botticelli - Victoria Charles - Страница 3

2. Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist as a Child (detail), c. 1468.

Tempera and oil on poplar, 90.7 × 67 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

3. Sandro Botticelli (?), Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, c. 1491–1493.

Tempera on panel, 47.6 × 38.1 cm.

Ishizuka Collection, Tokyo.

4. Virgin and Child with Two Angels, c. 1485–1495.

Tempera on panel, diameter: 32.5 cm.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, also known as “di Botticello” in homage to his first master, and Sandro Botticelli to those who knew him, was born in Florence in 1445. Even though Vasari asserts he died in the city-state of Florence in 1515, he passed away on May 17th, 1510. Shrewd and highly alert, he was endowed with a certain aristocratic grace, a typical child of the sophisticated class of Florentines. The rigid traditions of the old medieval Commune might well have restricted him to his professional guild or his quarter, or could have tied him to some modest manual occupation. He thus would have had a goldsmith’s workshop or a pharmacy in the shadow of his father’s house, or would have sold Psalters and rosaries on the Ponte Vecchio. On Sundays he might have sung endless Laudes amongst his companions of the Dominican clergy, and on occasion he would have donned his blue, black, or grey penitent cape and a yellow wax candle and would, without sadness, have followed the mortal remains of some neighbour to the nearest Campo Santo. A very narrow and humble destiny, which Florentines of the past had accepted indifferently, while the city, according to Dante sobria e pudica, lived happily in the untouchable sphere of its worldly traditions. But from the middle of the 15th century, the bonds that tied the citizen and curbed his will and the fancies of his ambition began to crack. The Renaissance gave birth to a creature full of inclinations, “the Individual”, who now escaped the olden discipline. Encouraged by the Church, adulated by tyrants, republics, or art patrons, the quintessential Florentine art rose above the Arti Maggiori, higher still than the bankers, lawyers, wool or silk weavers. It was the art of the painter or sculptor, an aristocracy amongst the princedoms of the Quattrocento, a glory of which young boys were dreaming longingly as soon as they beheld and admired Giotto at Santa Croce, Masaccio at Carmine, Fra’ Filippo Lippi at the Cathedral of Prato, or Donatello at Orsanmichele.

Now the passion for beauty possessed the soul of Italy and ruled supreme over Florence. There was not a palace, not a church, not a monastery that was not a feast for the eyes and a solemn reminder of the Christian conscience in a dashing play of colours, magnificent garments, the grave demeanour of the figures and their postures, and the display of the most dignified scenes from the Old Testament or the Gospel.

An incessant popular pilgrimage brought citizens of the Mercato Vecchio and the farmers of the contado to those beautiful works of art every day. Here they found the image of their faith, the edifying liturgical dramas of the Rappresentazioni sacre: the stable of Bethlehem with the ox and the ass; the Wise Men prostrated in front of the manger, clad in purple and ermine, holding the golden incense burners; the painful episodes of the Passion, Jesus, covered in blood, crowned in thorns, crucified between two thieves, resurrected, victorious over death. It was here they greeted the patron saints of their city, village, parish, or friary. As often as ten times a day, a Florentine citizen would find himself lifting his cap in front of an icon of Saint John, clad poorly in a sheepskin, carrying his frail reed cross. Or maybe this citizen stopped at some hospital portico, or a cemetery pavilion, or in the courtyard of a rich Guelph mansion; and wherever he went he would be confronted with the symbols of his public life, even with a vision of his own dying hour. He would see processions and grand entrances of lords, tournaments and banquets, the trumpet of Judgment Day and the pale dead rising from their graves.

5. Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist as a Child, c. 1468.

Tempera and oil on poplar, 90.7 × 67 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

6. The Virgin Adoring the Child, 1480–1490.

Tempera on panel, diameter: 58.9 cm.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

7. Sandro Botticelli and assistants, The Virgin and Child with Saint John Adoring the Child, c. 1481–1482.

Tempera on panel, diameter: 95 cm.

Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza.

8. The Annunciation, c. 1495–1500 (?).

Tempera on panel, 49.5 × 61.9 cm.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

From the 13th century onward, painters became the pride of Florence. Cimabue’s grand Byzantine Madonna at Santa Maria Novella, so rigid still, and of such a sullen countenance, nonetheless stunned the dilettanti of the year 1260. When Charles I of Anjou crossed Tuscany on his way to Naples, the magistrates honoured the brother of Saint Louis between all the festivities and entertainment by taking him to visit Cimabue’s workshop in a garden near the Porta San Piero. All the noblemen, the high bourgeoisie, and the genteel ladies accompanied the French prince with such exclamations of joy that this quarter has since been called “Borgo Allegri”. To the sound of trumpets and bells, the Madonna was then taken from the painter’s house to the Rucellai chapel in a very solemn procession. Over the course of the 14th century, the writings of Boccacio and Sacchetti began to reveal the freedom that the Florentine spirit gave to craftsmanship, to adventures and miseries, to the artists’ skill and wit, to Giotto’s jests, and to the practical jokes of the incomparable second-hand artist Buffalmaco. From the middle of the 15th century, Florentine art itself assumed a national purpose. The patronage of the Medici, from Cosimo the Elder to Lorenzo the Magnificent, elevated the social standing of sculptors and painters who dedicated themselves to the embellishment of patrician life. In fact, all the princes and city-states of Italy borrowed Florence’s painters and sculptors, who were sent as missionaries of its genius to all the schools of the peninsula. The artists were received everywhere enthusiastically, regardless of their origins: Sixtus IV invited them to decorate the Sistine Chapel, Alexander VI left the rooms of the Vatican to the superb brush of the Umbrian Pinturicchio, who displayed the drunken revels of the Borgia without shame. The rigid pride of Julius II never bent except for when he faced the one and only Michelangelo. Leo × was seen kneeling and crying at Raphael’s deathbed…

It was thus that in less than fifty years, the Italian artist assumed an eminent place amongst the masters of civilisation. Like the condottiere, the poet, the grand schemer, the diplomat, like all those who were privileged by nature and who owed nothing to their forefathers, who were themselves the masterpieces of their own spirit, the artist could now unfold the generous forces or the perverted instincts of his conscience without any constraint. Whether it was Michelangelo or Aretino, the artist was greeted as the uomo singolare, uomo unico, the unique craftsman of a dazzling destiny and, in order to use the term that was at the very heart of the Renaissance, the virtuoso. We know that the virtù that Machiavelli glorifies in his most riveting passages has nothing to do with virtue. The virtuoso can be a great Christian, a very pure citizen, an excellent soul – such was Michelangelo and doubtlessly Brunelleschi, as well. But, in most cases, these ideal creatures, such as Cesare Borgia, Benvenuto Cellini, Pier Luigi Farnese, or Aretino, mocked the vulgar morality and the outdated traditions that governed the lives of the naive sort of people.

9. The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, c. 1480–1490.

Silverpoint and brown ink on parchment, 44.5 × 39 cm.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City.

10. Angel, c. 1485–1490.

Pen over chalk, wash and white heightening, 25.3 × 16.1 cm.

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

At the same time one must keep in mind that society was amazingly indulgent, delighted by the audacity of the strong and thrilled by the malice of the treacherous. The Italian virtuoso was certainly a product of his age. The Italian Church, corrupted by earthly vanities, had too big a share of moral responsibility in this. The motherly tenderness it showed for its beloved artists encouraged them in their most liberal fantasies. So when Fra’ Filippo Lippi had the idea of abducting a young nun and making her his mistress, Pope Eugene IV offered him a marriage dispensation and forgot to release him from his vows. But Lippi rejected the dispensation “so that he could do as he pleased” and kept his head shaved and his status of monk until his death. A dispensation by Pius II did not change anything about this extraordinary lifestyle. In their obituary, the good Carmelite friars registered the death of Frater Filippus, and the clergy of Spoleto devotedly laid him to rest at his church of Santa Maria dell’Assunta. He was survived by his son Filippino (who himself became an artist) and six little daughters.

Later, when Pope Clement VII locked up Benvenuto Cellini in the Castel Sant’Angelo because the latter liked to plant an occasional knife in the backs of Roman citizens, the very noble soul Paul III replied to anyone who denounced the vices of his pious assassin: “Men who are unique in their art, like Cellini, cannot be subjected to the law, and him less than anyone.”

One must thus keep in mind this dominant character of the Italian genius, of the Florentine genius, soaked with individual energy by three centuries of revolution. From year to year, the Quattrocento further broadened the horizon of enlightenment that fascinated the eyes of its children. The temptation of glory roused in them a calling to the arts. The smallest, the most obscure people harboured dreams of immortality. So the poor young man Sandro, clad in a coarse frock in his father’s tanning workshop, haunted by paradisiacal images that he had seen in the village churches, his ear ringing with the chants from the street, was also silently preparing for his future. In this fertile Florence, the butcher’s son Filippo Lippi, the barber’s son Paolo Uccello, and Pollaiolo, the son of a poultry merchant, all did the same.

11. The Annunciation (left panel), 1490.

Tempera on canvas, 45 × 13 cm.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

12. The Annunciation (right panel), 1490.

Tempera on canvas, 45 × 13 cm.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

The first lines of Vasari’s biography of Botticelli deserve a closer look:

The child was raised with much care by Filipepi and instructed in all things that the little ones must learn before you put them in the shops. But, even though he learned easily and fast anything he set his mind to, he was nonetheless always restless (era nientedimeno inquieto sempre) and at school, he rebelled against reading, writing, and arithmetic. Thus the father, irritated by this strange brain (infastidito di questo cervello si stravaganle) and disheartened (per disperato), made him an apprentice with a goldsmith, a friend by the name of Botticello (“the little bottle”), who was at the time an excellent master of this art.

This young boy with the burning imagination was full of promise but was an appalling pupil. Therefore his disappointed father advised him to become a goldsmith. As a matter of fact, he was “scrawling little figures all over his books and those of his classmates”, just like Filippo Lippi. Like Andrea del Castagno, he drew figures and animals on the school walls with coal. Being a good Florentine, his father could not suppress the blossoming talent of the artist who was trapped within the walls of his home. Little Sandro was only too happy to leave the school desks behind and escape the schoolmaster’s whip. So he spent some time braiding light filigrees of gold or silver under the watchful eyes of Botticello, chiselling ladies’ jewellery and reliquaries, and the daisies and roses that would later blossom on his paintings.

13. The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, early 1490s.

Tempera and gold on wood, 34.3 × 25.4 cm.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Vasari tells us that in this time, relations between goldsmiths and painters were intimate and frequent. The trade of goldsmith naturally led to painting. Masolino da Panicale and Paolo Uccello had once been apprentices in the workshop of Ghiberti. And did not many of Botticelli’s famous contemporaries, such as Andrea del Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiolo wield the file before they touched a brush? Domenico Ghirlandaio was the son of Tommaso, the tinsel maker, whose fingers handled the gold tinsel that young girls used to wreath into their hair in the middle of the century. Andrea del Sarto was later trained in the same art. It was a very Florentine discipline, from which the painters of Florence retained their taste for delicate ornaments as well as for the finesse of their work. The practice of the detailed, scrupulous design, the striving for the most tender, purest, even strange forms, the chatter in the workshop, the proximity of the painters’ workshops, and their delight at the beauty of a sunset, the golden softness of dusk, the austere look of the Apennine mountains washed in dark blue, the faint chimes of distant bells, the farewell to the dying day, which conjured up the memory of the great exiled Florentine Dante – all these impressions were these young men’s labour and leisure at the same time. They helped steer them away from the trade of goldsmith that was honest but limited and rigid in its procedures, and led them onto the footsteps of Masaccio and Filippo Lippi.

The gate of the Baptistery, which Michelangelo referred to as the “Gate to Paradise”, taught the children of Florence lessons every day. In fact, Ghiberti worked on this jewel for more than twenty years, and it almost seems as if he simply wanted to exemplify the easy passage from the goldsmith’s art to decorative sculpture. But it was actually the aesthetic and the techniques of painting that revealed themselves in these bronze bas-reliefs. The very delicate carving of the hair, the pleats of the robes, stirred by a breeze of air, the details of the ornaments are those of a goldsmith, but the general movement of the figures, the confidence and tricks of the perspective, the succession and grading of the layers, sometimes down to a vague light-dark, betray the “painter in bronze”, the artist who does not heed the rules of the school and nimbly overcomes the traditional barriers between sculpture and painting. From each panel numerous heads stand out on a sloping background, aligned in perspective. The effect of picturesque illusion is astounding. In order to achieve it, Ghiberti used all the layers of the relief, all the way to the straccialo (the cleft), where the lower parts are just carved or notched.

14. Minerva, c. 1480–1485.

Pencil on paper, 18.9 × 8.7 cm.

Biblioteca Pinacoteca Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan.

15. Faith, c. 1480–1490.

Pen and brown ink over black chalk with white heightening, 25 × 16.6 cm.

The British Museum, London.

In Florence, the art of goldsmith was thus the pathway to painting, and the apprentice’s passion for images in colour would soon lead him to desert his gold dust-spangled workbench and offer his services to some master who was renowned for his Holy Family, his Magi or his Crucifixions. Therefore, in 1462, young Botticelli hastily took his leave from the old Botticello. His own father, who according to Vasari “understood the inclinations of this brain”, conducted him to the door of Fra’ Filippo Lippi, who was still politely called Filippo del Carmine, Filippo the Carmelite, despite the canonical irregularities in his life. Botticelli was fifteen years old at the time. Since 1458, Lippi had been working on his masterpieces, the Life of Saint John the Baptist and the Life of Saint Stephen in the Cathedral of Prato near Florence. He was then considered the greatest painter in all of Italy. He had taken his entire school and his loyal colleague Fra’ Diamante to the Prato. The young man suddenly found himself confronted with an art that was liberal, very vibrant, and slightly sensual. This was no longer the hieratic gravity of Masaccio, the simple dignity of Gospel characters, the discreet pathos of religious scenes, half shrouded in mysterious half-light, or the chaste, slightly frigid graces of the chapel Brancacci. Fra’ Filippo’s lively imagination threw itself joyfully upon the most familiar realities. He sought to achieve the most seductive faces, the most feminine and motherly Madonnas, the most varied and rich garments, the most original gestures, angels who did not resemble pious choir children, architectures that were more refined, landscapes that were wider, sunnier, and covered in flowers and roses. In the Prato of Vasari’s time, after Raphael and Leonardo, during the lifetime of Veronese, one still admired the captivating expression of his figures; the serenity of Saint Stephen, stoical in the shower of rocks hurled at him by raving Jews, the beauty of his eyes turned heavenward, which seemed to plead with God on behalf of his executioners; the apostolic enthusiasm of John preaching to the masses; and in the Feast of Herod, the majestic arrangement of the banquet and the “beautiful demeanours of the bodies, the skilful play of the draperies.”

One can assume that Filippo Lippi was fond of little Sandro from the first day. He was to love him tenderly until the end of his life, and as he felt death draw near in Spoleto, he entrusted him, as per his testament, with the guardianship of his ten-year-old son Filippino. Fra’ Diamante took the child to Botticelli in Florence, who was then already considered a maestro buonissimo.

16. Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, Queen Vasthi Leaving the Palace of Susa, c. 1475.

Oily tempera on panel, 46.1 × 43 cm.

Museo della Fondazione Horne, Florence.

17. Giuliano da Maiano and other Florentine carpenters, after a painting by Sandro Botticelli, Apollo’s Music and Minerva in Arms.

Palazzo ducale, Angels’ Room, Urbino.

18. Francione and Giuliano da Maiano, after a painting by Sandro Botticelli, Dante and Petrarch, 1478.

Wood marquetry.

Palazzo Vecchio, Lily Room, Florence.

19. Judith Leaving the Tent of Holofernes, c. 1497–1500.

Panel, 36.5 × 20 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The training of the apprentice right on the scaffolding in the cathedral was thus very swift. At the age of twenty-three, Botticelli was already known throughout his native town for the excellence of his work. He had very quickly completed the apprenticeship of a very laborious discipline, the minutest details of which were presented half a century later in the inquisitive Libra dell’ Arte by Cennino Cennini. But in the course of the Quattrocento, a novice to the art would work thirteen or fourteen years under the eyes and at the service of a master. He would begin by sweeping the workshop and watching the brasero, and eventually he would do some sketches. For six years, he would then dedicate himself to mixing colours in the bottega, making the skin glues, preparing the canvasses. Finally, for another six years, and still doing drawings every day, even on holidays, he would dip his brush in the colour and try his hand at a golden drapery, at a fresco, at the shading of the figures, at the tones of the fabrics which changed according to how they met light and shadow, at the transparency of water, at architectures, at the fleeting layers of the landscapes, at picturesque flora and fauna, at figures of messengers and greyhounds, at slender cypress trees, or pine trees with rounded cupolas, at the virginal candour of lilies, at bay trees embroidered with bright red flowers, at meadows spattered with anemones, hyacinth, and buttercups. Only then would the boy, the ragazzo, become maestro, and Florence would have one new master among the ranks of its painters. But in order to make a living while waiting for his lordly and ecclesiastic clientele, the young man would practice another small trade, in the evenings after the workshop closed. Antonio Pollaiolo returned to the goldsmith’s workshop, twisted the filigrees, inserted gems, and cooked up silver enamels. Botticelli, the more inventive one, created new chemicals and dyed fabrics and flags in colours that would withstand sunlight and the unrelenting Florentine rain.

Botticelli, however, did not content himself with the lofty art lessons that Saint Stephen and the Baptist imparted to him in the Cathedral of Prato. In the Florentine sculptors’ and painters’ workshops of the time, the sheer power of invention, the curiosity for beautiful works was so lively and mutual emulation so intense, that a novice received, even without knowing it, a broad variety of instruction and could claim to have three or four teachers. The artwork of his young fellow apprentices also pushed him to imitate, in this insecure phase when the artist, inquieto, still trying to find his own original style, likes to follow the masters’ footsteps.

Fra’ Filippo Lippi was called to Santa Maria dell’Assunta in Spoleto in 1467, where it seems his pupil did not follow him. He did not hesitate to allow the young Botticelli to take wing on his own. He had, in fact, taught him the technique of his art, the manoeuvres, his concept of personal liberty, this serenity of inspiration that was spiced with a natural cheerfulness in this genial monk. Vasari tells us that “Fra’ Filippo liked to be among merry people and always lived with joy.” Botticelli held on to his master’s serenity for a long time. But as far as cheerfulness is concerned, there is hardly a trace of it in his work, or in his life. The artist was to live the destiny of the lyrical soul, carried towards the more sublime, sapphire-blue regions by enthusiasm and dreams, and hurled back onto earth by the miseries of his time, a destiny of bitterness and disillusion, of anxiety about the future, of life doomed to end in sadness.

20. Minerva, c. 1480–1490.

Black pencil, pen and ink, bistre, ceruse and some light brown watercolour on white paper partially primed in pink, cross-ruled in black pencil and perforated on one side along the outlines of the figures, 22.2 × 13.9 cm.

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

21. Abundance or Autumn, c. 1475–1482.

Drawing, 31.7 × 25.2 cm.

The British Museum, London.

For some years, after his initiation at the Cathedral of Prato, Botticelli was touched by very varied influences. Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno, who along with Masaccio were among the best painters of the first half of the Quattrocento, left rather noticeable marks on his work. In fact, Uccello inspired him to find subtle perspectives and create deep landscapes. To Andrea del Castagno, this violent realist of untamed imagination, Botticelli owed the almost fierce precision of the postures, and maybe the coarseness of certain figures. His familiarity with the great goldsmith-painters of his time, the Pollaiolo brothers and Verrocchio, was even more fertile. All three of them were a few years older than he. They instilled in him the perfection of detail, the diligence of the design, the harmonious weighing of the ensemble, of the bright range of opaline colours, and the seriousness of the execution, qualities not dominant in Filippo Lippi, but which were going to be the charm of Botticelli’s masterpieces.

To all these models mentioned by Florentine art historians, we can add two masters who certainly seduced the young artist by the lure of their poetry: Luca della Robbia and Donatello. Their figures are of such a calm expression, of such enchanted physiognomy, almost translucent so that their delicate, pure souls shine through. There are also the young heroes with fearless hearts and noble swords, such as Donatello’s bronze Saint George and David, the young nude athlete, crowned by an ivy-laced shepherd’s hat. Classical sculpture had never attempted to astonish the conscience in such a way, and to reveal the thoughts or sensations of that instant with the help of gestures and poses of ideal simplicity. Are the Florentine youngsters that Della Robbia makes sing or play musical instruments not proof of this spirit? The same is true for Donatello’s young Saint John; and also for his bands of happy little boys “who walk interlaced like vine branches while dancing and singing” around the external pulpit of the Cathedral of Prato. It was not the official school of aesthetics that guided the hand of these two sculptors. Free from doctrine, in a very Florentine, very naturalist tradition, they aimed for the most seductive expression of life in its first flower, such as they found it on the streets of their towns, on the banks of the Arno, in the bluish incense fumes on the chancels. The young Saint John, in bas-relief, is a child of ten years, shoulders and arms naked, chest half covered in a lamb fleece, with curly hair, a defined face and a very gentle gaze. He is a little surprised and his mouth is slightly opened as if for an Ave Maria. It is said that the bust of young David, serious, already manly, with dreamy eyes, a nervous and almost shivering figure, was the portrait of a young nobleman. The youth of Florence was more than suitable to pose for artwork. Just by making their brown locks longer and softer, Botticelli transformed children or adolescents into his marvellously beautiful angels, which his pupil Filippino Lippi would adopt later on.

22. Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, La Bella Simonetta, c. 1480–1485.

Tempera on panel, 64 × 44 cm.

Marubeni Corporation, Tokyo.

23. Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Woman (Simonetta Vespucci), c. 1480–1485 (?).

Tempera on panel, 59 × 40 cm.

The National Gallery, London.

Vasari tells us that upon his return from Rome in 1482, Botticelli, in need of money, annotated Dante, and illustrated the scenes of the Inferno (he forgot to mention The Purgatory and The Paradise). This work had a very important moral impact and was the first sign of a deep spiritual crisis that would last until the artist’s death. The chronicler interpreted this project as nothing more than a new manifestation of Botticelli’s very fanciful spirit; for didn’t he write “Per essere persona sofistica”? The Italy of Vasari, after Alexander VI, Leo X, and Clement VII, after Alessandro de’ Medici, and Lorenzaccio (Lorenzino de’ Medici), had abandoned itself to the morbid sweetness of servitude and was certainly quite far removed from Dante and its greatest citizen’s mystical terrors, rage, and hatred. Around the same time, a lonely and misunderstood Michelangelo also confessed his religious anxiety on the margins of his Divine Comedy. In one of his most beautiful sonnets, he wrote about Dante that “ill-known his labours are, by that foul mob ingrate, whose honours fail but to the just alone.”

To the Florentines of the Medici era, Dante’s dark visions and raptures were even more obscure than in the day of the old Guelph Commune. The people had in fact forgotten the banished man whose remains rested down there in Ravenna, in the tomb of the Roman Empire. With the exception of Machiavelli, hardly any scholars, humanists, Platonists, or politicians read the formidable tercets any more, in which the fury and sufferings of a forever-extinct world lay buried. It wasn’t until the age of thirty-five that a certain Florentine painter, looking for resources or inspiration for his art, was able to approach the austere poet and step over the threshold of his Inferno for the first time. It is true that depictions of the terrible abyss could be seen everywhere on the walls of the chapels and monasteries. It was a picturesque and familiar sermon that the Church liked to deliver in order to strike their congregations with awe before God’s judgment. But did those diabolic images really remind the faithful of the terrible Cantica? The spectacle of infernal roasting, the boilers and skewers, devils armed with forks, the twisted bodies and grimaces of the punished, the beastly mask of Satan, all seemed to embody the sonorous homilies of the mendicants, sung between the vespers and the evening mass, from the pulpito and sometimes even from trestles set up in the parish churchyards. The one serious feature is the painters’ satirical invention. In a shrewd interpretation of popular irony, they threw into the claws of the demon an extraordinary number of men with tonsures, tiaras, mitres, or princely crowns, as well as monks of all colours. The Italian Church looked on these inoffensive auto-da-fés with a benign smile and tolerated depictions of the Antichrist that were grotesque enough to brighten up a children’s tale. Maybe the idea was that the pictorial torture inflicted upon popes, bishops, preachers, and minor clergy would fill the minds of the faint-hearted laity with some salutary fear.

It is likely that Dante was a missal of poetry to the young Sandro and that his writings remained among the most treasured memories of his life. The Divine Comedy was one of his first encounters with the netherworld, inspiring a curiosity of the invisible that was going to appear even in his least Christian works. Therefore Botticelli’s affinity to Dante helps us better understand the core of his inner life and allows us to discover in this artist, who was so enamoured with feminine grace, the deep roots of the strange beliefs with which he would disturb his contemporaries during the last two decades of his life.

24. Sandro Botticelli (?), Portrait of a Young Man with a Trecento Medallion, c. 1481–1485.

Tempera on panel, 58.7 × 39.4 cm.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.