File:Art and criticism - monographs and studies (1892) (14597919200).jpg

Identifier: criticismmo00chil (find matches)
Title: Art and criticism : monographs and studies
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore
Subjects: Art criticism
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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st sympathetic and truly personal qualities. Ihave already insisted upon the always beautiful vision of lifeand humanity that Botticelli records in his pictures. It mayalso be remarked that he avoids painting age, even middle age,except, of course, in pictures of saints. His perfect figures arehis Mercury in the Allegory of Spring, the three Graces, thesleeping Mars, and his Madonnas; his great delight is to paintripening womanhood and virgin virility, and especially thatcharming transition period between childhood and youth, theperiod which the Latins call adolescence, with its peculiargrace and its beauty still hesitating between the two sexes. Inthe ministering children who figure as angels, with thoughtfuland eager faces, in his religious pictures, Botticelli has surpassedDonatello and Luca della Robbia in loveliness of feature, sup-ple charm of attitude, and intense rendering of character. Vasari says that Botticelli commented a part of Dante, il« wo HH m o „ r1tr f 3 > 5 o
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SANDRO BOTTICELLI. 25 Iustrated the Inferno and had it printed. We know, howeverof no written commentary of Dante by Botticelli; on the otherhand, the first Florentine edition of Dante, published in 14S1,with a commentary by Cristoforo Landini, contains some en-gravings on copper to illustrate the Inferno alone, varying innumber from eighteen to twenty-one, according to the copies,which are certainly made from drawings by Botticelli; and fur-thermore, the. Berlin Museum purchased with the Hamiltoncollection of manuscripts a folio volume of eighty-six sheets offine parchment, twelve by eighteen inches, containing the textof the Divine Comedy and eighty-six autograph designs inpencil and pen and ink by Botticelli, one of which is signed inmicroscopic letters, Sandro di Mariano, the only signature ofthe artist that we have. This Berlin manuscript is not complete:seven sheets with eight designs belonging to it are in the Vati-can library, and five sheets are lost, or at any rate undiscove

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