The Career of Botticelli
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When looking at a work such as Sandro Botticelli's Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John at the Cleveland Museum of Art a modern viewer might be moved by its emotional qualities, charmed by the atmosphere, delighted by the drawing, or even feel reverent before its religious message. More careful attention can produce an appreciation for the alternation of colors--yellow, blue, flesh tones, russet red--in graceful strips that hold the composition together. Or such attention might concentrate on the delicate transparency of the Virgin's veil, facial similarities among the three figures, or the apparent failure of foreshortening in the Virgin's right arm. More knowledgeable viewers may even compare the Virgin's dreamy physiognomy with more famous versions of Botticellian beauty. But, because it is hanging in an American museum among other, varied, examples of the art of the Italian Renaissance, the painting's particular relationships to Botticelli's career and to its original audience are obscured. Even when visiting museums with a number of works by Botticelli, or other individual masters, "we tend not to make any distinctions in our minds about what kinds of work these are, and about where they were originally sited: gallery walls blur such distinctions" (Thomas 15). Placing a work such as the Cleveland Madonna in a broader context is difficult. The museum visitor cannot do so easily because information such as the identity of the original owner, the precise date
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a strong visual presence [for] the artist's work" (Thomas 221). Often, as was certainly the case for Botticelli, these works provided a sound economic base and enabled him "to garner more lucrative commissions for altarpieces" (Kanter Catalogue 31).
The round paintings, or tondi, of which the Cleveland Madonna is a good example, were the most fashionable and expensive type of privately purchased religious paintings. This was due to the fact that the frames were "more difficult to construct and carve" and they were "status symbols among upper-middle class families in Tuscany (Kanter Catalogue 39). Botticelli specialized in these paintings and was particularly adept at designing for the round shape. As Kanter notes, he would often employ spatial devices that created the "illusion of a convex surface--deeper towards the center and shallower at the edges" which were intended to evoke the effect of round mirrors (39). The Cleveland Madonna is an example of this tendency. Everything in the painting seems to be, somehow, lower that the little bulge of the infant's stomach which is at the center of the tondo. The figure of St. John is too small and the Virgin's left arm and shoulder, which should project at least as far as the c
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Approximate Word count = 6121
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page)
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