153. Ercole de’ Roberti, The Month of September: Mars and Venus in Bed (detail), c. 1470.
Early Renaissance. Fresco. Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara.
The pyramidal composition and the attention paid to the quality of the drawing are characteristic of the contempoary Florentine school of thought.
154. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), The Birth of Venus, 1484–1486.
Early Renaissance. Tempera on canvas, 180 × 280 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
The title announces the influence here of the Roman classics, as it selects the Roman name, rather than the Greek name for the goddess of love – Aphrodite. The geometric centre of the work is the gesture of modesty near the left hand of Venus, the central figure, although the triangular arrangement of the overall work leads our eye to accept her upper torso as central. Her long tresses and flowing garments throughout make the overall geometric arrangement soft and dynamic. The sides of an equilateral triangle are formed by the bodies of the figures on either side of Venus; the base of the triangle extends beyond the sides of the work, making the painting seem larger than it is (Piet Mondrian will exploit that technique in a minimalist way centuries later). The mature goddess has just been born from the sea, blown ashore by Zephyr (The West Wind), and his abducted nymph Chloris. The stylised waves of the sea bring the shell-boat forward and counter-clockwise to The Hour waiting on the shore. The sea has somehow already provided a ribbon for her hair. Her introspective expression is typical of the central figures in the painter’s work (See Portrait of a Man, 1417). The Hour, symbolising Spring and rebirth, begins to clothe the naked, new-born goddess with an elegant, high fashion robe covered in flowers, similar to her own gown on which there are corn flowers. Several spring flowers are sprinkled throughout the scene: orange blossoms in the upper right; evergreen myrtle around The Hour’s neck and waist; a single blue anemone between The Hour’s feet; over two dozen pink roses accompany Zephyr and Chloris. Cattails in the lower left balance the strong verticals of the orange trees. Each of the figures is outlined in thin black lines, characteristic of the artist. Sometimes the artist doesn’t follow his outline, but doesn’t cover it up either; as we see along the right arm of Venus, the outline has become visible over the years.
155. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), Venus and Mars, c. 1485.
High Renaissance. Tempera and oil on panel, 69.2 × 173.4 cm. The National Gallery, London.
156. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), Primavera, c. 1478.
Early Renaissance. Tempera on panel, 203 × 314 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
The painting, sometimes called Primavera, but also known as Realm of Venus, is Botticelli’s most celebrated masterpiece. This work is one in a series of paintings depicting heathen myths and legends in the form of antique gods and heroes. Just as convincingly and naïvely, and with the same enthusiasm, Botticelli makes the beauty of the naked human body his task. In the large presentation of Primavera he does indeed describe an antique subject, stipulated by his clients and advisers, but he penetrates it with his mind, his imagination and his artistic sense. The composition is built up in nine, almost life-size figures in the foreground of an orange grove. The individual figures are borrowed from Poliziano’s poem about the great tournament in the spring of 1475, the Giostra, in which Giuliano was declared the winner. The artistic appearance of Primavera which, apart from the dull old layer of varnish, is well preserved, deviates from most of Botticelli’s paintings in so far as that the local colours are rather secondary. This is how the artist tried to bring out the full beauty of the figures’ bodies, which, apart from Venus and Primavera, are more or less naked. He enhances this with the deep green background, covered with flowers and fruit. There, where local colours occur to a greater extent as, for example, in the short red robe of the pale blue decoration of the god of wind or the blue dress and red cloak of Venus in the middle, the colours have been strongly tinted with gold ornaments and glaze.
157. Bartolomeo di Giovanni, The Procession of Thetis, c. 1490–1500.
Renaissance. Wood, 42 × 150 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
158. Hans Memling, Vanity (central panel of the Triptych of Terrestrial Vanity and Celestial Redemption), c. 1490.
Northern Renaissance. Oil on wood, 20 × 13 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.
Little is known of Memling’s life. It is surmised that he was a German by descent, but the only thing we know for certain is that he painted at Bruges, sharing with the Van Eycks, who had also worked in that city, the honour of being the leading artists of the so-called ‘School of Bruges’. He carried on their method of painting, and added to it a quality of gentle sentiment. In his case, as in theirs, Flemish art, founded upon local conditions and embodying purely local ideals, reached its fullest expression.
159. Lorenzo di Credi, Venus, c. 1493.
Early Renaissance. Oil on panel, 151 × 69 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
160. Pietro Perugino, St Sebastian, c. 1490–1500.
High Renaissance. Oil on wood, 176 × 116 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Perugino’s art, like Fra Angelico’s, had its roots in the old Byzantine tradition of painting. The latter had departed further and further from any representation of the human form, until it became merely a symbol of religious ideas. Perugino, working under the influence of his time, restored body and substance to the figures, but still made them, as of old, primarily the symbols of an ideal. It was not until the 17th century that artists began to paint landscape for its own sake.
However, the union of landscape and figures counts very much for Perugino, because one of the secrets of composition is the balancing of what artists call the full and empty spaces. A composition crowded with figures is apt to produce a sensation of stuffiness and fatigue; whereas the combination of a few figures with ample open spaces gives one a sense of exhilaration and repose. It is in the degree to which an artist stimulates our imagination through our physical experiences that he seizes and holds our interest. When Perugino left Perugia to complete his education in Florence he was a fellow-pupil of Leonardo da Vinci in the sculptor’s bottegha. If he gained from the master something of the calm of sculpture, he certainly gained nothing of its force. It is as the painter of sentiment that he excelled; though this beautiful quality is confined mainly to his earlier works. For with popularity he became avaricious, turning out repetitions of his favourite themes until they became more and more affected in sentiment.
161. Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, c. 1495–1505.
Early Renaissance. Tempera on canvas, 210 × 91 cm. Galleria Franchetti, Ca’ d’Oro, Venice.
162. Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi), Apollo, end of the 15th century.
High Renaissance. Bronze and silver, height: 54.6 cm. Ca’ d’Oro, Venice.
The sculptor Pier Jacopo Alara-Bonacolsi was called “Antico” because of the references to antique