Botticelli and Florence

About the lecture

Botticelli's works are now seen as synonymous with the Renaissance. Paintings such as The Birth of Venus and the Primavera, with their antique subjects, are seen as the epitome of Renaissance art.

Yet Botticelli has never fitted comfortably into art history's canon of Renaissance art. His works are extraordinarily beautiful to look at, but they have always been difficult to explain. The Calumny of Apelles, The Birth of Venus, the Primavera and the Mystic Nativity still fuel debate about their true meaning. Part of the reason is their complex allegory. Part is that, from one painting to the next, he seems to conform to Renaissance ideals such as mathematical perspective and then to ignore them.

The lecture looks at Botticelli's early life and works, and his training under the early Renaissance master Fra Filippo Lippi. It follows the long and prolific career of an artist unique in his approach to the Renaissance aesthetic, whose rapid rise and allegiances among the Florentine nobility, in particular the Medici, put him at the heart of the city's politics, literature and religion.

It also looks at Botticelli's unusual approach to anatomy, and at his supposed love for, or obsession with, Simonetta Vespucci, who seems to appear in so many of his best-known works. It asks how an artist who practised the very latest techniques early in his career came to personify the ideal Renaissance artist, why his work fell from favour by the end of his life, and how it was revived to give him the reputation he still has today as a unique Renaissance enigma.

General bibliography

• Ames-Lewis, Francis, The Early Medici and their Artists (Birkbeck, 1995)
• Ames-Lewis, Francis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (Yale, 2002)
• Argan, Giulio Carlo, trans. James Emmons, Botticelli (Skira, 1957)
• Graves, Robert (trans.), Apuleius: The Golden Ass (Penguin Books, 1950)
• Lightbown, Ronald W., Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work (New York, 1989)
• Schumacher, Andreas (ed.), Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion (Städel Museum catalogue, Hatje Cantz, 2009)