Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli)
The Calumny of Apelles | |
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Artist | Sandro Botticelli |
Year | 1494–95 |
Medium | Tempera on panel |
Dimensions | 62 cm × 91 cm (24 in × 36 in) |
Location | Uffizi, Florence |
The Calumny of Apelles is a panel painting in tempera by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. Based on the description of a lost ancient painting by Apelles, the work was completed in about 1494–95, and is now in the Uffizi, Florence.
The content of Apelles' painting, as described by Lucian, became popular in Renaissance Italy, and Botticelli was neither the first nor last Italian Renaissance artist to depict it.[1] Leon Battista Alberti had praised it and recommended it as a subject for artists to recreate in his highly influential De pictura of 1435, and there were four translations of Lucian's Greek into Latin or Italian during the 15th century.[2]
A number of Botticelli's secular works show an interest in recreating some of the lost glories of
The painting is an
Subject
The figures are either personifications of vices or virtues, or in the case of the king and victim, of the roles of the powerful and the powerless. From left to right, they represent (with alternative names): Truth, nude and pointing upwards to Heaven; Repentance in black; Perfidy (Conspiracy) in red and yellow, over the innocent half-naked victim on the floor, who is being pulled forward by the hair by Calumny (Slander), in white and blue and holding a flaming torch. Fraud, behind, arranges Calumny's hair. Rancour (Envy), a bearded and hooded man in black, holds his hand towards the king's eyes to obscure their view. On the throne, the king has the donkey's ears of King Midas, and Ignorance on his far side and Suspicion on the near side grasp these as they speak into them. The king extends his hand towards Calumny, but his eyes look down so that he cannot see the scene.[8]
These identifications are clear from Lucian's description of a painting by Apelles, a Greek painter of the Hellenistic Period. Though Apelles' works have not survived, Lucian recorded details of one in his On Calumny:
On the right of it sits Midas with very large ears, extending his hand to Slander while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of malignant passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence. She is conducted by a pale ugly man who has a piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he represents envy. There are two women in attendance to Slander, one is Fraud and the other Conspiracy. They are followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—she is Repentance. At all events, she is turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who is slowly approaching.[9]
Botticelli reproduced this quite closely, down to the donkey ears of the seated king, into which the women that flank him speak. A richly gowned Slander (or Calumny), with her hair being dressed by her attendants, is being led by her slender, robed companion. The victim she is dragging, nearly nude and with his ankles crossed as if to be crucified, raises his hands in prayer.[citation needed]
According to Lucian, the painting was made after Apelles had himself been slandered, denounced to
Borrowings and style
Other scenes probably derive from ancient engraved gems, and one recreates another of Lucian's descriptions, of a family of centaurs by Zeuxis (below the throne).[16] In general, though many of the subjects of the decorative sculpture are classical, the style of their depiction, especially in the statues, is firmly from Botticelli's own period.[17] The palace is beside the sea, which can be seen, flat and plain, through the windows;[18] as often, Botticelli has little interest in enlivening his depiction of landscape with detail. The living figures contrast in style with the statues, and are all thin and elongated in a rather mannered way.[19]
According to Frederick Hartt, "some of the oppressive effect of the Calumny is produced by its illogical space".[20] Most of the architecture has a more or less consistent vanishing point, around the head of Fraud, but the central cornice and vaults use one a good deal lower. The movement of the narrative action across the picture space conflicts with the strong pull of the perspective to the back of the picture space.[21]
History
Some decades later
Frederick Hartt notes the temptation to see the painting as a defence of
It was later in the Medici collection in the
-
Truth and Repentance
-
The victim
See also
- List of works by Sandro Botticelli
Notes
- ^ Altrocchi (1921), p. 470 and see Girolamo Mocetto.
- ^ Lightbown, 230; Ettlingers, 144–145
- ^ Ettlingers, 144
- ^ Vasari describes it this way, 155
- ^ Lightbown, 231, 235
- ^ Deimling (2000), p. 72; Lightbown, 230, 232
- ^ Lightbown, 235–237
- ^ Lightbown, 234
- ^ Altrocchi (1921), pp. 454, 456–457; quoting translation by A.M.Harmon.
- ^ Altrocchi (1921), p. 455.
- ^ Lightbown, 230–231
- ^ Altrocchi (1921), p. 455.
- ^ Lightbown, 231
- Ghiberti on the frame of the Baptistery's south door as model.
- ^ Legouix, 114
- ^ Lightbown, 231, 235
- ^ Ettlingers, 202–203; Legouix, 114
- ^ Lightbown, 234
- ^ Lightbown, 235
- ^ Hartt, 336
- ^ Hartt, 336–337
- ^ Vasari, 155; Lightbown, 235–237
- ^ Hartt, 337
- ^ Legouix, 114
References
- Altrocchi, Rudolph (1921). "The Calumny of Appelles". In Modern Language Association of America (ed.). Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Vol. 36. The Association. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
- Deimling, Barbara (1 May 2000). Sandro Botticelli, 1444/45-1510. Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-5992-6. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
- "Ettlingers": ISBN 0500201536
- ISBN 0500235104
- Legouix, Susan, Botticelli, 114, 2004 (revd edn), Chaucer Press, ISBN 1904449212
- Lightbown, Ronald, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, 1989, Thames and Hudson
- Vasari, selected & ed. George Bull, Artists of the Renaissance, Penguin 1965 (page nos from BCA edn, 1979). Vasari Life on-line (in a different translation)