Today we admire the exquisite paintings of Botticelli, filled with symbolism, but we forget that he belonged to the vibrant intellectual circle of Renaissance Florence.
Born in Florence in 1444/1445, Alessandro (Sandro) Filippi, known as Sandro Botticelli, initially learned the craft of goldsmithing, and later became drawn to painting during his adolescence. He first joined the Dominican monk Filippo Lippi (1406–1469), and later attended Verrocchio’s workshop alongside Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), with whom he became friends.
During his time in Verrocchio’s workshop, he was introduced to various painting techniques and the harmony of colors, as well as the secrets of the subtle application of divine proportion or the golden ratio, that perfection felt in The Adoration of the Magi, The Birth of Venus, and Primavera. Botticelli’s works exude freshness of colors, refined beauty of faces, and elegance of lines, and many of them represent expert depictions of principles of Neoplatonic philosophy.
His painting is both refined and intellectual, which is at odds with the new currents that revived in Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo several decades later.
Botticelli spent his entire life in Florence, except for a brief stay in Rome around 1481, when he masterfully painted several scenes in the Sistine Chapel at the request of Pope Sixtus IV. Around 1490, he began illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, a work that captivated him until his death in 1510.
The Cultural Circle in Florence
Botticelli did not become a genius through apprenticeship in the workshops of master painters, but thanks to the strong encouragement he received in the Florentine Platonic Academy, which brought together artists, writers, and scientists. There, in the spirit of Neoplatonism, a new worldview was shaped that sought to connect Greek and Roman cultural heritage with Christianity.
In Florence, he visited philosophers p Like Marsilio Ficino, who developed the philosophical principles of the Renaissance by combining them with Neoplatonism, he was also inspired by Alberti, the author of a treatise on painting that accompanied him throughout his life. This book sparked two ambitions in him: to one day equal poets in the expression of symbolic images and to become a new Apelles, the most famous ancient painter, whose still lifes were so lifelike that they could even deceive birds.
The poet Angelo Poliziano, who was also a member of the Academy and the teacher of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s children, inspired his boldest allegorical creations.
Neoplatonism, beauty, and love
The intellectual, moral, and spiritual influence of this Platonic circle on the cultural life of Florence was immense. It was there that the fundamental principles of Neoplatonism, with beauty and love at its center, were primarily studied.
Love, as stated in Plato’s Symposium, is metaxu, that is, the intermediary between the sensory and the intelligible world, i.e. the world of ideas. and the principles that govern the world. Love enables penetration into the mysteries of the universe. It elevates the soul from the material to the divine. That is why the little cupids, often represented in the Renaissance, have wings just like Eros.
Love is born out of the desire for beauty, as Plato says in the Symposium: Love is desire, longing awakened by Beauty.
Beauty does not solely represent a harmonious combination of parts. Beauty is the radiance and emanation of the divine, and art that creates beauty has a hidden meaning that elevates the soul.
In the Spring, Botticelli depicts the three essential steps in the metamorphosis of the soul of a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, who, awakened by beauty, must establish unity within himself in order to achieve his search for truth.
Botticelli, the painter of ideal beauty
The search for ideal beauty was a great challenge for all painters of the High Renaissance (Raphael, da Vinci, Michelangelo), while Botticelli was almost obsessed with this pursuit.
His paintings are full of idealized depictions woman. Whether it is Venus or the Virgin Mary, these are images of sublime love. It is contemplation of the beauty of a woman that enchants the soul and elevates it to the secret of the divine.
It is enough to observe the faces in his paintings to notice their almost natural idealization: mythological figures (The Birth of Venus), religious ones (The Magnificent Madonna), or portraits of contemporaries (Portrait of a Girl) after 1480.
The genius of the artist lies in the fact that, sensing the beauty of the world and the beings that surround him, he paints something even further than that visible beauty and thus makes the ideal of the beautiful accessible to everyone.
The Artist as a Magician
In this elevation of the soul from the beautiful to the good, art, and especially painting, represents not only an aesthetic but also an ethical and spiritual path. And the artist is its messenger. As such, he cannot be solely a skilled technician. In order to shape his work in matter, he must find and grasp ideal forms.
Thus, the artist’s work becomes a reflection of a higher realm. It is about ideas, and not just individual visions. With its symbolic message and aesthetic value, it leaves a special impression on the soul and leads to its liberation.
In this way, Botticelli tried to elevate himself to a state where the artist, painting with the eyes of the soul and not with physical eyes, becomes, in a way, a prophet of the divine. The artist, like a magician, makes the spiritual appear in people’s eyes through beauty.