PARIS.- The Musée Jacquemart-André celebrates the creative genius of Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) and the activity in his studio, by exhibiting forty works executed by the sophisticated painter, complemented by several paintings by contemporary Florentine artists who were particularly influenced by Botticelli. Botticelli’s career—he was one of Florence’s greatest artists—attests to the economic development and the profound changes that transformed the city during the rule of the Medici.

Botticelli is one of the Italian Renaissance’s best known painters, although some aspects of his life and the activity of his studio remain a mystery. He consistently alternated between the production of one-off paintings and works produced in series, completed with the help of his many assistants. The exhibition shows the importance of this practice in his studioa laboratory of ideas and training centre, characteristic of the Italian Renaissance. It presents Botticelli in his role as a creative artist and also as an entrepreneur and teacher.

In a chronological and thematic manner, the itinerary illustrates Botticelli’s personal stylistic development, the links between his work and contemporary culture, and the influence of his work on that of the Florentine artists of the Quattrocento.

The exhibition includes works loaned by prestigious institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Vatican museums and libraries, the Uffizi in Florence, and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

FROM FILIPPO LIPPI’S STUDIO TO INDEPENDENCE

An initial section has been devoted to Botticelli’s early works that were still influenced by his master Filippo Lippi (1406–1469), the last major artist of the first Quattrocento, as well as by his contemporaries, such as Andrea del Verrocchio.

Botticelli’s first works—like those of his master Filippo Lippi—focused on the theme of the Virgin and Child, a theme usually intended for private worship. The works exhibited in this room attest to the long apprenticeship of the young Botticelli until the development of his unique style, as attested by the masterpiece executed in the 1480s, the Madonna of the Book in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan.

NARRATIVE PAINTING

The second room focuses on Botticelli and the tradition of Florentine commissions: the patrician residences were decorated with many paintings, which were also incorporated into furniture and inserted into the panelling that lined the walls.

This method of execution reflected the way in which work was organised in the studio and the allocation of tasks caried out by the master and his assistants. The most famous and talented of them, Filippino Lippi, was the son of Botticelli’s former master: the artist took him under his wing upon the death of the latter, in 1469.

Filippino produced several works under the guidance of Botticelli, who occasionally contributed to their execution.

THE POLYVALENT STUDIO

Botticelli was passionately interested in the applied arts. Alongside his Florentine commissions, Botticelli executed plans and drawings for a series of objects involving a variety of techniques, ranging from tapestry to embroidery and marquetry.




These works include familiar figures that featured in his painted oeuvre, in particulier that of the goddess Minerva represented on a marquetry door in the ducal palazzo of Urbino and a tapestry woven for a French patron.

BOTTICELLI AND THE MEDICI

Sandro Botticelli’s work as a portraitist is known through around ten paintings on wood, none of which are signed or dated, the fine ‘heads’ in the frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel (1481–1482), and, lastly, a few portraits that can be seen on religious panel paintings. The most famous is undoubtedly the portrait of Guiliano de’ Medici, murdered in 1478; several versions of the portrait exist. Botticelli imbued his models with a unique charisma and communicative power, shifting over the years to a more simplified and sober style. In the 1490s he executed portraits rendered in a highly sculptural way, the finest example of which is the portrait of the poet and soldier Michele Marullo Tarcaniota.

In the 1480s and 1490s, these works were complemented by ‘allegorical’ portraits that represent fleeting female figures and their metaphorical and symbolic meanings, as attested here by the portrait of the Bella Simonetta.

These idealistic representations of female beauty were executed in several formats, such as, for example, the Venus Pudica, or ‘modest Venus’, which is based on the main figure in the famous Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Gallery. They were executed in series and became veritable icons. These compositional and working methods reflect Botticelli’s creative genius and the important role he played in promoting a theme that was dear to the Medici, and which has now become emblematic of the Florentine Quattrocento.

RELIGIOUS PAINTING: FROM TONDOS TO ALTARPIECES

The general public is unfamiliar with the regular production of large church altarpieces in the studio run by Botticelli, who worked on several pieces in the tradition passed down by his masters.

This room contains the large altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin (circa 1462), which also depicts Saint Justus of Volterra, Jacopo Guidi da Certaldo, Saint Romuald, Saint Clement, and a Camaldolese Monk in the lower half of the painting. Loaned from the Bass Museum in Miami, it has been reunited with its predella for the first time.

Another of the specialisations in Botticelli’s studio was the production of tondi, circular paintings or reliefs that were much sought after in Florence.

Botticelli excelled in the compositional work of this complex format, which was the favourite support used for the religious scenes intended for private worship. Hence, Botticelli ingeniously and constantly refreshed their relatively repetitive iconography.

In his studio, Botticelli also produced replicas of the most popular scenes, as attested by this fine copy of the Madonna of the Magnificat.

THE LAST MANNER: INSPIRED BY SAVONAROLA’S AESTHETICS

The graphic sense and inventive genius of Botticelli’s creative mind could only react with passion to the prophetic and tortured visions of the monk Savonarola.

The emergence of his mysticism had a veritable aesthetic impact on Botticelli’s oeuvre: the once harmonious and graceful forms curved inwards and became more compacted, and the melancholic beauties were now chaste, and the compositions themselves adopted the obsolete conventions in which the figures and landscapes were arranged disproportionately in a hierarchy of rules that had long since gone out of fashion. The last room in the exhibition brings together works such as Judith With the Head of Holofernes (end of the 1490s) in the Rijksmuseum and a Crucifix (circa 1490–149) from the Prato Diocese, which have been rarely exhibited in France.