not heed the rules of the school and nimbly overcomes the traditional barriers between sculpture and painting. From each panel numerous heads stand out on a sloping background, aligned in perspective. The effect of picturesque illusion is astounding. In order to achieve it, Ghiberti used all the layers of the relief, all the way to the straccialo (the cleft), where the lower parts are just carved or notched.
14. Minerva, c. 1480–1485.
Pencil on paper, 18.9 × 8.7 cm.
Biblioteca Pinacoteca Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan.
15. Faith, c. 1480–1490.
Pen and brown ink over black chalk with white heightening, 25 × 16.6 cm.
The British Museum, London.
In Florence, the art of goldsmith was thus the pathway to painting, and the apprentice’s passion for images in colour would soon lead him to desert his gold dust-spangled workbench and offer his services to some master who was renowned for his Holy Family, his Magi or his Crucifixions. Therefore, in 1462, young Botticelli hastily took his leave from the old Botticello. His own father, who according to Vasari “understood the inclinations of this brain”, conducted him to the door of Fra’ Filippo Lippi, who was still politely called Filippo del Carmine, Filippo the Carmelite, despite the canonical irregularities in his life. Botticelli was fifteen years old at the time. Since 1458, Lippi had been working on his masterpieces, the Life of Saint John the Baptist and the Life of Saint Stephen in the Cathedral of Prato near Florence. He was then considered the greatest painter in all of Italy. He had taken his entire school and his loyal colleague Fra’ Diamante to the Prato. The young man suddenly found himself confronted with an art that was liberal, very vibrant, and slightly sensual. This was no longer the hieratic gravity of Masaccio, the simple dignity of Gospel characters, the discreet pathos of religious scenes, half shrouded in mysterious half-light, or the chaste, slightly frigid graces of the chapel Brancacci. Fra’ Filippo’s lively imagination threw itself joyfully upon the most familiar realities. He sought to achieve the most seductive faces, the most feminine and motherly Madonnas, the most varied and rich garments, the most original gestures, angels who did not resemble pious choir children, architectures that were more refined, landscapes that were wider, sunnier, and covered in flowers and roses. In the Prato of Vasari’s time, after Raphael and Leonardo, during the lifetime of Veronese, one still admired the captivating expression of his figures; the serenity of Saint Stephen, stoical in the shower of rocks hurled at him by raving Jews, the beauty of his eyes turned heavenward, which seemed to plead with God on behalf of his executioners; the apostolic enthusiasm of John preaching to the masses; and in the Feast of Herod, the majestic arrangement of the banquet and the “beautiful demeanours of the bodies, the skilful play of the draperies.”
One can assume that Filippo Lippi was fond of little Sandro from the first day. He was to love him tenderly until the end of his life, and as he felt death draw near in Spoleto, he entrusted him, as per his testament, with the guardianship of his ten-year-old son Filippino. Fra’ Diamante took the child to Botticelli in Florence, who was then already considered a maestro buonissimo.
16. Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, Queen Vasthi Leaving the Palace of Susa, c. 1475.
Oily tempera on panel, 46.1 × 43 cm.
Museo della Fondazione Horne, Florence.
17. Giuliano da Maiano and other Florentine carpenters, after a painting by Sandro Botticelli, Apollo’s Music and Minerva in Arms.
Palazzo ducale, Angels’ Room, Urbino.
18. Francione and Giuliano da Maiano, after a painting by Sandro Botticelli, Dante and Petrarch, 1478.
Wood marquetry.
Palazzo Vecchio, Lily Room, Florence.
19. Judith Leaving the Tent of Holofernes, c. 1497–1500.
Panel, 36.5 × 20 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
The training of the apprentice right on the scaffolding in the cathedral was thus very swift. At the age of twenty-three, Botticelli was already known throughout his native town for the excellence of his work. He had very quickly completed the apprenticeship of a very laborious discipline, the minutest details of which were presented half a century later in the inquisitive Libra dell’ Arte by Cennino Cennini. But in the course of the Quattrocento, a novice to the art would work thirteen or fourteen years under the eyes and at the service of a master. He would begin by sweeping the workshop and watching the brasero, and eventually he would do some sketches. For six years, he would then dedicate himself to mixing colours in the bottega, making the skin glues, preparing the canvasses. Finally, for another six years, and still doing drawings every day, even on holidays, he would dip his brush in the colour and try his hand at a golden drapery, at a fresco, at the shading of the figures, at the tones of the fabrics which changed according to how they met light and shadow, at the transparency of water, at architectures, at the fleeting layers of the landscapes, at picturesque flora and fauna, at figures of messengers and greyhounds, at slender cypress trees, or pine trees with rounded cupolas, at the virginal candour of lilies, at bay trees embroidered with bright red flowers, at meadows spattered with anemones, hyacinth, and buttercups. Only then would the boy, the ragazzo, become maestro, and Florence would have one new master among the ranks of its painters. But in order to make a living while waiting for his lordly and ecclesiastic clientele, the young man would practice another small trade, in the evenings after the workshop closed. Antonio Pollaiolo returned to the goldsmith’s workshop, twisted the filigrees, inserted gems, and cooked up silver enamels. Botticelli, the more inventive one, created new chemicals and dyed fabrics and flags in colours that would withstand sunlight and the unrelenting Florentine rain.
Botticelli, however, did not content himself with the lofty art lessons that Saint Stephen and the Baptist imparted to him in the Cathedral of Prato. In the Florentine sculptors’ and painters’ workshops of the time, the sheer power of invention, the curiosity for beautiful works was so lively and mutual emulation so intense, that a novice received, even without knowing it, a broad variety of instruction and could claim to have three or four teachers. The artwork of his young fellow apprentices also pushed him to imitate, in this insecure phase when the artist, inquieto, still trying to find his own original style, likes to follow the masters’ footsteps.
Fra’ Filippo Lippi was called to Santa Maria dell’Assunta in Spoleto in 1467, where it seems his pupil did not follow him. He did not hesitate to allow the young Botticelli to take wing on his own. He had, in fact, taught him the technique of his art, the manoeuvres, his concept of personal liberty, this serenity of inspiration that was spiced with a natural cheerfulness in this genial monk. Vasari tells us that “Fra’ Filippo liked to be among merry people and always lived with joy.” Botticelli held on to his master’s serenity for a long time. But as far as cheerfulness is concerned, there is hardly a trace of it in his work, or in his life. The artist was to live the destiny of the lyrical soul, carried towards the more sublime, sapphire-blue regions by enthusiasm and dreams, and hurled back onto earth by the miseries of his time, a destiny of bitterness and disillusion, of anxiety about the future, of life doomed to end in sadness.
20. Minerva,
