1000 Drawings of Genius. Victoria Charles

cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      67. Andrea Mantegna, 1430/1431-1506, Italian, The Risen Christ with St Andrew and Longinus, c. 1472. Pen and ink and wash on paper, 35 × 28.5 cm. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich. Early Renaissance.

      68. Ercole de’ Roberti, c. 1450–1496, Italian, Study of a Foot After a Model Sculpture, 1470. Pen, brush, brown ink, brown wash and highlights in white on prepared red paper, 13.7 × 8.7 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      69. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, Italian, Bust of a Warrior in Profile, c. 1475–1480. Silverpoint on paper, 28.7 × 21.1 cm. British Museum, London. High Renaissance.

      70. Gentile Bellini, c. 1429–1507, Italian, Self-Portrait, c. 1480. Silverpoint on paper, 23 × 19.5 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      71. Gentile Bellini, c. 1429–1507, Italian, A Turkish Woman, c. 1480. Pen and ink, 21.4 × 17.6 cm. British Museum, London. Early Renaissance.

      72. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, Saint John the Baptist, c. 1480s. Pen and ink on paper, 36 × 15.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      73. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, c. 1432–1498, Italian, Adam, c. 1475. Black pencil, pen and ink on white paper, 28.3 × 17.9 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      74. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, c. 1432–1498, Italian, Eve, c. 1475. Black pencil, pen and ink on white paper, 27.8 × 18.6 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      75. Andrea del Verrocchio, 1435–1488, Italian, Head of an Angel, c. 1470. Black pencil, pen and ink on paper, 20.9 × 18.1 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      76. Domenico Ghirlandaio (Domenico Bigordi), 1448/1449-1494, Italian, Head of a Woman, date unknown. Silverpoint and white lead on watermarked white paper, 33.1 × 25.4 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      77. Filippino Lippi, c. 1457–1504, Italian, An Apostle and a Young Man, date unknown. Metalpoint, white highlights. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden. Early Renaissance.

      78. Pedro Berruguete (attributed to), c. 1445–1503, Spanish, Moses at Mount Sinai, date unknown. Pen and ink. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Early Renaissance.

      79. After Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, La Bella Simonetta, date unknown. Silverpoint on paper, 34 × 23 cm. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Early Renaissance.

      80. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, Illustration for Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXXIV, c. 1480–1500. Silverpoint, pen and ink on parchment, 63.5 × 46.8 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      81. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, Illustration for Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XVIII, c. 1480–1500. Silverpoint, pen and ink on parchment, 32.5 × 47.5 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      82. Hugo van der Goes (attributed to), c. 1420–1482, Flemish, Sitting Saint, c. 1475. Pen and ink on paper. The Courtauld Gallery, London. Northern Renaissance.

      83. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, Illustration for Dante’s Divine Comedy: Paradiso, Canto XXVIII, c. 1480–1500. Silverpoint, pen and ink on parchment, 32.5 × 47.5 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      84. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), 1445–1510, Italian, Illustration for Dante’s Divine Comedy: Purgtorio, Canto XXX, c. 1480–1500. Silverpoint, pen and ink on parchment, 32.5 × 47.5 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. Early Renaissance.

      SANDRO BOTTICELLI

      (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi)

      (Florence, 1445–1510)

      Sandro Botticelli was the son of a citizen in comfortable circumstances, and had been, in Vasari’s words, “instructed in all such things as children are usually taught before they choose a calling.” However, he refused to give his attention to reading, writing and accounts, continues Vasari, so that his father, despairing of his ever becoming a scholar, apprenticed him to the goldsmith Botticello: whence came the name by which the world remembers him. However, Sandro, a stubborn-featured youth with large, quietly searching eyes and a shock of yellow hair – he has left a portrait of himself on the right-hand side of his picture of the Adoration of the Magi – would also become a painter, and to that end was placed with the Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi.

      But he was a realist, as the artists of his day had become, satisfied with the joy and skill of painting, and with the study of the beauty and character of the human subject instead of religious themes. Botticelli made rapid progress, loved his master, and later on extended his love to his master’s son, Filippino Lippi, and taught him to paint. But the master’s realism scarcely touched him, for Botticelli was a dreamer and a poet. Botticelli is a painter not of facts, but of ideas, and his pictures are not so much a representation of certain objects as a pattern of forms. Nor is his colouring rich and lifelike; it is subordinated to form, and often rather a tinting than actual colour. In fact, he was interested in the abstract possibilities of his art rather than in the concrete. For example, his compositions, as has just been said, are a pattern of forms; his figures do not actually occupy well-defined places in a well-defined area of space; they do not attract us by their suggestion of bulk, but as shapes of form, suggesting rather a flat pattern of decoration. Accordingly, the lines which enclose the figures are chosen with the primary intention of being decorative.

      It has been said that Botticelli, “though one of the worst anatomists, was one of the greatest draughtsmen of the Renaissance.” As an example of false anatomy we may notice the impossible way in which the Madonna’s head is attached to the neck, and other instances of faulty articulation and incorrect form of limbs may be found in Botticelli’s pictures. Yet he is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen: he gave to ‘line’ not only intrinsic beauty, but also significance. In mathematical language, he resolved the movement of the figure into its factors, its simplest forms of expression, and then combined these various forms into a pattern which, by its rhythmical and harmonious lines, produces an effect upon our imagination, corresponding to the sentiments of grave and tender poetry that filled the artist himself. This power of making every line count in both significance and beauty distinguishes the great master – draughtsmen from the vast majority of artists who used line mainly as a necessary means of representing concrete objects.

      85. Sandro