Sandro Botticelli- A Study Early renaissance painting began with Giotto marked by a return to nature.

This was carried forward by Massacio in painting, Donatello in sculpture and Brunelleschi in architechture. Florence, thus became a centre of the new art. Sandro Botticelli was the first to experiment with classical figures and symbols as seen in La Primavera, Birth of Venus,Venus and Mars, Pallas and the Centaur and The Calumny of Appellus. Botticelli also features in the list of Quattrocento artists. The cultural and artistic events of 15th century Italy are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento (from the Italian for the number 400, or from "millequattrocento," 1400). Quattrocento encompasses the artistic styles of the late Middle Ages (most notably International Gothic) and the early Renaissance. Quattrocento artists were far from being intellectuals. They were really artisans with scant education so more often than not their patrons may have given instructions on the themes they wanted them to paint. The patrons, in turn, were influenced by the philosophy they subscribed to. In the case of Botticelli, this patron was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco who, sources have suggested, was influenced by the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino The ways in which Botticelli, Castagno or Piero della Francesca conceived and drew the human form shows no trace whatever of the influence of classical sculptor. Man as painted by the quattrocentisti has often a very small waist, an attribute which suited the fashion of the day, and short muscles rather than long onestwo features unknown to classical sculpture. As for women, she was far from having the proportions of classical statues. She had, as can be seen in Botticellis Primavera and Birth of Venus, a long slender body, sloping shoulders, little bust, and a rounded stomach, and as with men, these characteristics were accentuated by the fashion in clothes. Botticellis own fluid, graceful version of the human body is very different from the classical human figure in stone. The quattrocentisti borrowed from antiquity, the edifices that they put as backdrops of their paintings or frescoes, or an occasional detail like the sarcophagus in Ghirlandaios Adoration of the Shepherds. Also, when they treated classical subjects, as Botticelli did in his Birth of Venus, Primavera, Pallas and Calumny. Mantegna, a passionate lover of ancient Rome is the only exception. The early Renaissance artists were just barely literate. They were of humble stock who did not consider themselves different from the blacksmiths, carpenters or cobblers. They did not work for a restricted circle of connoisseurs but for the society itself. Their works in churches and public offices were seen and admired by the entire world. Giotto gave an impetus to Florentine painters of the coming century by leaving a legacy of two techniquesthe first an intense study of nature, particularly of the human body and secondly, a knowledge of the laws of perspective. Thus, the study of human anatomy gained immense significance in the 15 th century. There was an eagerness to reproduce the human form and its musculature. Perspective was rediscovered by Brunelleschi and treatises were written on it by Leon Battista Alberti and by Piero della Franchesca. Giotto developed a rudimentary and conventional perspective which was taken further by Brunelleschi who taught it to Masaccio, who applied them correctly. There is no doubt that some of the architectural backgrounds of paintings and frescoes were there to demonstrate the artists skill of perspective. Florentine and Umbrian artists readily took to linear perspective as it enabled them to draw their scenes in a more life-like manner. They did not take so much to aerial perspective, the art of portraying distance by different shades of colour. For them form took precedence over all the rest. Florentine paintings are scrupulously exact though without falling into dry meticulousness. This preoccupation with form may have been due to the fact that many of them started as goldsmiths and sculptors. Lastly, one of the great aims of the painters of that time was to depict human beauty. When a quattrocentisto set out to treat a subject, he wanted everyone in itChrist, the Virgin, saints, and angelsto be as beautiful as possible in both face and figure, except when the subject specifically demanded it., as with St. John the Baptist

in the desert or the penitent Mary Magdalene. So far did they carry their love of beauty that in scenes depicting the birth of Christ, they never painted the baby realistically as it could not have beautiful enough, it was always at least a one year old. Sandro Botticelli (1457-1504) with Fra Angelico are the two most representative painters of the Quattrocento Fra Angelico of the first half of the century and Botticelli of the second. Though Botticelli was practically a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, he belonged to a different stylistic period. He was a student of Fra Lippo Lippi. There is a streak of melancholy and a sense of uneasy calm on all the female faces that he painted, both mythological and biblical. He had a high individual feeling for physical beauty. There is also a languid gracefulness in the lines of the bodies he painted. He produced a particular type of feminine beautya being of dancing gait and slightly thin blooded charm, and he produced it again and againto render for the Virgin and the angels, as well as Venus and the Three Graces. Botticellis art is sensuous and at the same time transcends senses in its endeavour to attain spiritual grace. He was the pupil of Fra filippo Lippi. Botticelli was influenced by Antonio Pollaiuolo, to whom he owes the suggestion of an incisive line, realising the anatomical construction of the bodies, their plastic strength, their physical movement so suited for expressing the impulses of their souls. Pollaiuolo, absorbed in his energy of line, plastic form and movement, found his catharsis in terribilita, whereas Botticelli on the other hand never forgot to soften his line, to make it an object of contemplation, to render it serene by rhythm. Andrea del Castagno and Andrea Verrocchio suggested to Botticelli energy of rhythm and of plastic planes, and also encouraged him in search for a dramatic vigour, for a passionate seriousness and a monumental synthesis. Botticelli assimilated all this, but he preferred the serene repose to be found in freshness of flowers, in the delicacies of bodies, in the gracefulness of the dance. Botticelli was fifty years old when he was profoundly aroused and disturbed by the violent preaching of Savonarola, despite his friendship for and gratitude to the Medici. Henceforth, his work was to bear the trace of this conflict. One of the most important aspects of his work can be seen in his mythological scenes. They mark a big step forward. Before him, painters had confined themselves to Christian subjects. Botticelli brought the Gods of antiquity into Renaissance artmost importantly Venus. E. H. Gombrich quotes L. Rosenthal in a lecture in which he says that Botticellis art owed its vogue to the fact that it could be interpreted in any way that the viewer wants. Thus the whole gamut of emotions from sadness to joy has been read into the pretty features of Venus. Below, I have attempted to study symbolism in two of Botticellis paintings: La Primavera and Birth of Venus in terms of their historical background and the Neoplatonic interpretation by E. H.Gombrich. Birth of Venus It was painted in 1486 and is now kept in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The patron who commissioned the Botticelli painting for his country villa was a member of the rich and powerful family of the Medici (Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco). Either he himself, or one of his learned friends, probably explained to the painter what was known of the way the ancients had represented Venus rising from the sea. To these scholars the story of her birth was the symbol of mystery through which the divine message of beauty came into the world. One can imagine that the painter set to work reverently to represent this myth in a worthy manner. The action of the picture is quickly understood. Venus has emerged from the sea on a shell which is driven to the shore by flying wind-gods amidst a shower of roses. As she is about to step on to the land, one of the Hours or Nymphs receives her with a purple cloak. Botticelli has succeeded where Pollaiuolo failed.

His picture forms, in fact, a perfectly harmonious pattern. But Pollaiuolo might have said that Botticelli had done so by sacrificing some of the achievements he had tried so hard to preserve. Botticelli's figures look less solid. They are not so correctly drawn as Pollaiuolo or Masaccio's. The graceful movements and melodious lines of his composition recall the Gothic tradition of Ghiberti and Fra Angelico, perhaps even the art of the fourteenth century - works such as Simone Martini's 'Annunciation'. Botticelli's Venus is so beautiful that we do not notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the queer way her left arm is hinged to the body. Or, rather, we should say that these liberties which Botticelli took with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline add to the beauty and harmony of the design because they enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and delicate being, wafted to our shores as a gift from Heaven. From E. H. Gombrich Story of Art The iconography of Birth of Venus is very similar to a description of the event (or rather, a description of a sculpture of the event) in a poem by Angelo Poliziano, the Stanze per la giostra. No single text provides the precise content of the painting, however, which has led scholars to propose many sources and interpretations. Art historians who specialize in the Italian Renaissance have found a Neoplatonic interpretation, which was most clearly articulated by Ernst Gombrich, to be the most enduring way to understand the painting. For Plato and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the Creator. A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love. More recently, questions have arisen about Neoplatonism as the dominant intellectual system of late 15thcentury Florence.

La Primavera La Primavera, also known as Allegory of Spring, is a tempera panel painting which was painted ca. 1482 now kept in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. While most critics agree that the painting, depicting a group of mythological figures in a garden, is allegorical for the lush growth of Spring as expounded by Vasari, other meanings have also been explored. Among them, the work is sometimes cited as illustrating the ideal of Neoplatonic love. It contains elements of Ovid and Lucretius and may have been inspired by a poem by Poliziano. The painting features six female figures and two male, along with a blindfolded putto, in an orange grove. To the right of the painting, a flower-crowned female figure in a floral-patterned dress is scattering flowers, collected in the folds of her gown. Her nearest companion, a woman in diaphanous white, is being seized by a winged male from above. His cheeks are puffed, his expression intent, and his unnatural complexion separates him from the rest of the figures. The trees around him blow in the direction of his entry, as does the skirt of the woman he is seizing. The drapery of her companion blows in the other direction. Clustered on the left, a group of three females also in diaphanous white join hands in a dance, while a reddraped youth with a sword and a helmet near them raises a wooden rod towards some wispy gray clouds. Two of the women wear prominent necklaces. The flying cherub has an arrow nocked to loose, directed towards the dancing girls. Central and somewhat isolated from the other figures stands a red-draped woman in blue. Like the flower-gatherer, she returns the viewer's gaze. The trees behind her form a broken arch to draw the eye. Venus presides over the garden - an orange grove (a Medici symbol), the Graces accompanying her (and targeted by Cupid) bearing jewels in the colours of the Medici family, while Mercury's caduceus keeps the

garden safe from threatening clouds). This male figure is generally accepted as Mercury but has also been identified as Mars. In addition to its overt meaning, the painting has been interpreted as an illustration of the Neoplatonic love popularized among the Medicis and their followers by Marsilio Ficino. The Neoplatonic philosophers saw Venus as ruling over both earthly and divine love and argued that she was a classical equivalent of a Virgin Mary. In fact the way she is framed in an altar-like setting that is similar to contemporary images of the Vigin Mary. The earthy carnal love represented by Zephyrus to the right is renounced by the central of the Graces, who has turned her back to the scene unconcerned by the threat represented to her by Cupid. Her focus is on Mercury, who himself gazed beyond the canvas at what Deimling asserts hung as the companion piece to Primavera, Pallas and the Centaur, in which "love oriented towards knowledge" (embodied by Pallas Athena) proves triumphant over lust (symbolized by the centaur).

To the Renaissance, Venus is an 'ambivalent' symbol. The humanists were familiar with her conventional role no less than with the more esoteric meanings attached to her in the dialogues of Plato, who speaks of two Venuses, or in the poem of Lucretius, who addresses her as the embodiment of the generative power. Even in the popular mind Venus lived in a dual role. As a planet she ruled over merrymaking, spring, love, finery and the sanguine complexion, and in some or all of these capacities she was seen to drive through the streets of Florence in many a carnival pageant. At the same time she remained the allegorical figure of chivalrous poetry, dwelling in the symbolic gardens and bowers of Romance. The question as to what Venus signified 'to the Renaissance' or even 'to the Florentine Quattrocento' is still too vague for the historian to obtain a well-defined answer.

Bibliography Books Articles Gombrich E.H, Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 8 (1945), pp. 7-60 DEzpezel and Fosca, History of Painting: From the Byzantine to Picasso, Oldbourne Press London, 1960. Gombrich E.H, The Story of Art, Phaidon Press; 16th ed., 1995.