Edward Hutton ended his tour of the Accademia in Florence with an appreciation of Botticelli at his best.
The Accademia possesses some five pictures by Botticelli,-- the Coronation of the Virgin and its predella, the Madonna with saints and angels, the Dead Christ, the Salome, and the Primavera….
Here at last we see the greatest, the most personal artist of the fifteenth century really at his best, in that fortunate moment of half-pensive joy which was so soon to pass away. How far has he wandered, and through what secret forbidden ways, from the simple thoughts of Angelico, the gay worldly laughter of Lippo Lippi. On that strange adventurous journey of the soul he has discovered the modern world, just our way of looking at things, as it were, with a sort of gift for seeing in even the most simple things some new and subtle meaning. And then, in that shadowy and yet so real kingdom, not without a certain timidity, he has ventured so far, he has come upon the very gods in exile, and for him Venus is born again from the foam of the sea, and Mars sleeping in a valley will awake to find her beside him, not as of old full of laughter, disdain, and joy; but half reconciled, as it were, to sorrow, to that change which has come upon her so that men now call her Mary, that name in which bitter and sweet are mingled together. With how subtly pensive a mien she comes through the spring woods here in the Primavera, her delicate hand lifted half in protest, half in blessing of that gay and yet thoughtful company,--Flora, her gown full of roses, Spring herself caught in the arms of Aeolus, the Graces dancing a little wistfully together, where Mercurius touches indifferently the unripe fruit with the tip of his caducaeus, and Amor blindfold points his dart, yes almost like a prophecy of death….What is this scene that rises so strangely before our eyes, that are filled with the Paradise of Angelico, the heaven of Lippo Lippi. It is the new heaven, the ancient and beloved earth, filled with spring and peopled with those we have loved, beside whose altars long ago we have hushed our voices. It is the dream of the Renaissance. The names we have given these shadowy beautiful figures are but names, that grace who looks so longingly and sadly at Hermes is but the loveliest among the lovely, though we call her Simonetta and him Giuliano. Here in the garden of the world is Venus’s pleasure house, and there the gods in exile dream of their holy thrones. Shall we forgive them, and forget that since our hearts are changed, they are changed also? They have looked from Olympus upon Calvary … and she, Venus Aphrodite, has been born again, not from the salt sea, but in the bitterness of her own tears, the tears of Madonna Mary. It is thus Botticelli, with a rare and personal art, expresses the very thought of his time, of his own heart, which half in love with Pico of Mirandola would reconcile Plato with Moses, and since man’s allegiance is divided reconcile the gods. You may discern something, perhaps, of the same thought, but already a little cold, a little indifferent in its appeal, in the Adoration of the Shepherds which Luca Signorelli painted now in the Uffizi, where the shepherds are fair and naked youths, the very gods of Greece come to worship the Desire of all Nations. But with Botticelli that divine thought is altogether fresh and sincere.
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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 307-309.
