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Botticelli
by
George Eliot gives many a side-glimpse of the art life of Florence in the days of the luxury-loving Medici. She saturated herself in Italian literature and history; and the days of Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi and Fra Girolamo Savonarola are bodied forth from lines deeply etched upon her heart.
When you go to Florence carry “Romola” in your side-pocket, just as you take the “Marble Faun” to Rome. “Romola” will certainly make history live again and pass before your gaze. The story is unmistakably high art, for from the opening lines of the proem you hear the slow, measured wing of death; and after you have read the volume, forever, for you, will the smoke of martyr-fires hover about the Piazza Signoria, and from the gates of San Marco you will see emerge that little man in black robe and cowl–that homely, repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the dark, leathery skin–that man who lured and fascinated by his poise and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as a warning to those whom he had hypnotized, they burned his swart, shrunken body in the public square, just as he had burned their books and pictures.
Sandro Botticelli, the painter, who made sensuality beautiful, ugliness seductive, and the sin-stained soul attractive, renounced all and followed the Monk of San Marco–sensuality and asceticism at the last are one. When the procession headed for the Piazza Signoria, where the fagots were piled high, Sandro stood afar off and his heart was wrung in anguish, as he saw the glare of the flames gild the eastern sky. And this anguish was not for the friends who had perished–no, no, it was for himself; the thought that he was unworthy of martyrdom filled his mind–he had fallen at the critical moment. Basely and cravenly he had saved himself. By saving all he lost all. To lose one’s self-respect is the only calamity. Sandro Botticelli had failed to win the approval of his Other Self–and this is defeat, and there is none other. He might have sent his soul to God on the wings of victory, in glorious company, but now it was too late–too late!
From this time forth he ceased to live–he merely existed. Into his soul there occasionally shot gleams of sunshine, but his nerveless hands refused to do the bidding of his brain. He stood on crutches, hat in hand, at church-doors, and asked for alms. Sometimes he would make bold to tell people of wonderful pictures within, over the altar or upon the walls; and he would say that they were his, and then his hearers would laugh aloud, and ask him to repeat his words, that others, too, might laugh. Thus dwindled the passing days; and for him who had painted the “Spring” there came the chilling neglect of Winter, until Death in mercy laid an icy hand upon him, and he was still.