BOTTICELLI

PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS. From the tempera on canvas in the
Uffizi. (Frontispiece)

This picture is generally regarded as the supreme achievement of
Botticelli's genius. It was probably painted about 1485, after his
return from Rome. The canvas measures 5 ft 8 in. by 9 ft 1 in., so
that the figures are nearly life size. No reproduction can do justice
to the exquisite delicacy of expression in the original. Something of
the same quality will be found in the "Mars and Venus" in the National
Gallery, which was probably painted about the same time. The two
figures on the left are usually described as Zephyrus and Zephyritis,
representing the south and south-west winds: that on the right may be
one of the Hours of Homer's Hymn, or possibly the Spring.

[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE BIRTH OF VENUS.]

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BOTTICELLI

BY HENRY BRYAN BINNS

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

[Illustration: title page logo]

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK

NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

1907

The plates are printed by BEMROSE DALZIEL, LTD., Watford

The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate

I. The Birth of Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
From the tempera on canvas in the Uffizi

II. Spring
From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy

III. Portrait of a Man
From the panel in the Florence Academy

IV. The Madonna of the Magnificat, known also as the Coronation
of the Virgin
From the tondo in the Uffizi

V. The Madonna of the Pomegranate
From the tondo in the Uffizi

VI. The Annunciation
From the panel in the Uffizi

VII. The Virgin and Child with St. John and an Angel
From the panel in the National Gallery

VIII. The Virgin and Child by an Open Window
From the panel in the National Gallery

[Illustration: Botticelli]

From Florence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, men looked
into a new dawn. When the Turk took Constantinople in 1443, the "glory
that was Greece" was carried to her by fleeing scholars, and she became
for one brilliant generation the home of that Platonic worship of
beauty and philosophy which had been so long an exile from the hearts
of men. I say Platonic, because it was especially to Plato, the
mystic, that she turned, possessed still by something of the mystical
intensity of her own great poet, himself an exile. When, in 1444, Pope
Eugenius left her to return to Rome, Florence was ready to welcome this
new wanderer, the spirit of the ancient world. And the almost childish
wonder with which she received that august guest is evident in all the
marvellous work of the years that followed, in none more than in that
of Sandro Botticelli.

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PLATE II.--SPRING. (From the tempera on wood in the Florence Academy)

The date of this painting is much debated. It may probably be about
1478, before the Roman visit. It is somewhat larger than the "Venus,"
but the figures are of similar size. Reading from the left they are
usually described as Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Primavera the
Spring-maiden, Flora, and Zephyrus. The robed Venus is in striking
contrast with that of the later picture.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--SPRING.]

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He indeed was born in the very year of that new advent, lived through
the period of its sunshine into one of storms--Stygian darkness and
frightful flashes of light--and went down at last, an old broken man,
staggering between two crutches, to his grave. His times were those of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was a few years his junior, the
unacknowledged despot of the Tuscan Republic, a prince, cold and hard
as steel, worthy to be an example for young Macchiavelli, yet none the
less a poet, and a devoted lover both of philosophy and of all
beautiful things.

BOTTICELLI