Florence: Botticelli in the Uffizi

Edward Hutton thought it almost impossible to do justice to the collection of the Uffizi Gallery which along with the Pitti Palace constituted "the finest collection of the Italian schools of painting in the world." Nevertheless, he was at his best in his discussion of Botticelli's masterpieces including the famous Birth of Venus. 

 Painted for Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, the birth of Venus is perhaps the most beautiful, the most expressive, and the most human picture of the Quattrocento. She is younger than the roses which the south-west wind fling at her feet, the roses of earth to the Rose of the sea. Not yet has the Shepherd of Ida praised her, nor Adon refused the honey of her throat; nor yet has Psyche stolen away her joy, nor Mars rolled her on a soldier’s couch amid the spears and bucklers; for now she is but a maid, and she cometh in the dawn to her kingdom dreaming over the sea. If we compare her for a moment with the Madonna of the Magnificat, with the Mary of the Pomegranate, she seems to us more virgin than the Virgin, less troubled by a love in which all the sorrow and desire of the world have found expression, less weary of the prayers that will be hers no less than Mary’s. 

How weary and with what sadness Madonna writes Magnificat, or dreams of the love that even now has come into her arms! Is it that, as Pater has thought, the honour is too good for her, that she would have preferred a humble destiny, the joy of any other mother of Israel? Who is she, this woman of divine and troubling beauty that masquerades as Venus, and with Christ in her arms is so sad and unhappy? Tradition tells us that she was Simonetta, the mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici, who, dying still in her youth, was borne through Florence with uncovered face to her grave under the cypresses. Whoever she may be, she haunts all the work of Botticelli, who, it might seem, loved her as one who had studied Dante, and, one of the company of the Platonists of Lorenzo’s court, might well love a woman altogether remote from him. As Venus she is a maid about to step for the first time upon the shores of Cyprus, and her eyes are like violets, wet with dew that have not looked on the sun; her bright locks heavy with gold her maid has caught about her, and the pale anemones have kissed her breasts, and the scarlet weeds have kissed her on the mouth. As Mary, her destiny is too great for her, and her lips tremble under the beauty of the words she is about to utter; the mystical veils about her head have blinded her, her eyelids have fallen over her eyes, and in her heart she seems to be weeping. But it is another woman not less mysterious who, as Judith, trips homeward so lightly in the morning after the terrible night, her dreadful burden on her head and in her soul some too brutal accusation.

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 316-319.