Sandro Botticelli at Jacquemart-André Museum: Florentine’s Old Master

By Susannah Edelbaum, to Museum Spotlight Europe (September 2021)

From September 2021 to January 2022, Sandro Botticelli, the esteemed Florentine artist of the Italian Renaissance, will be the subject of the Musée Jacquemart-André’s exhibit, “Botticelli, Artist and Designer.”  The beautiful nineteenth century museum is housed in an ornate former private mansion in Paris’s eighth arrondissement. Florentine Renaissance art specialist Ana Debenedetti and the museum’s chief heritage curator, Pierre Curie, have paired to curate a total of forty works, including pieces by Botticelli and contemporaries whom he inspired. 

Botticelli, born in 1445 as Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, likely adopted his last name—which translates to “little barrel”—from a nickname given to his more rotund brother, Giovanni. Botticelli is integral to the Quattrocento, the general culmination of Italian artistic and cultural movements of the 15th century. During this Early Renaissance period, post-medieval Italy grew in wealth, particularly in the Florentine Republic, where the artist spent his life. Historically, the Florentine Republic boasts architectural feats from Filippo Brunelleschi, cultural patronage from Lorenzo de Medici (better known as Lorenzo the Magnificent), and religious reforms from the itinerant friar, Girolamo Savonarola. 

The Musée Jacquemart-André situates Boticelli’s development as an artist within a historical context, by presenting a chronological progression of the Renaissance master’s oeuvre. Starting with religious paintings like Campana Madonna, the exhibition then moves forward to his so-called pagan works. These works on occasion are suggestive of more famous pieces:  for example, the Venus Pudica, or “modest Venus,” resembles one of Boticelli’s most famous paintings, The Birth of Venus, as both paintings share the same central figure. (The Birth of Venus remains in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and will not be shown as part of this exhibit). In addition, with the inclusion of items like the late 15th-century tapestry Peaceful Minerva, the show acknowledges the artist’s deep interest beyond the canvas to the applied arts.

The exhibit also addresses the artist’s less straightforward evolution within the scope of Botticelli’s religious-themed work. Expect to see tondi (round paintings much in demand in 15th-century Florence for private worship), which Botticelli made throughout his career, as well as several of Boticelli’s altarpieces. During the second half of the 15th century, monk Girolamo Savonarola’s influence on Botticelli grew. As a result, Botticelli’s religious depictions became less harmonious, more concentrated, and outmoded. In turn, these changes led to a disproportionate composition style. On loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Judith With the Head of Holofernes, which Botticelli painted in the late 1490s, is a glowing yet grim example of the influence that Savonarola’s prophesying and dark visions had on the artist.

In addition to the progression of Botticelli’s career, the exhibit highlights the painter’s studio practices, the culture of his art workshop, and the many decorative commissions from Florence’s wealthy residents. The Florence studio was both a laboratory of ideas and a training center for Botticelli’s many assistants. Among the painter’s most notable students was Filippino Lippi, the son of a friar, Filippo Lippi, in whose studio Botticelli himself was apprenticed at age eighteen. After the elder Lippi’s death in 1469, Boticelli took Filippino into his care. Thereafter, Filippino emerged as one of the most successful painters from the Botticelli studio. The Musée Jacquemart-André exhibit includes both The Return of Judith to Bethulia (1472), a work co-created by Botticelli and Filippino, and Madonna and Child, painted by the elder Lippi between 1460-65. Both paintings are on loan from Munich’s art museum, Alte Pinakothek.

Botticelli’s portraits nod to the Medicis and the republic’s foremost rulers, patrons, and tastemakers. His most noted portrait depicts the murdered Guiliano de’ Medici; of the several versions Botticelli painted, one example can be seen at the Musée Jacquemart-André thanks to a loan from the Accademia Carrara Museum in Bergamo, Italy. The Medicis’ influence can also be seen in Botticelli’s La Bella Simonetta, an idealized portrait of a young woman. Allegorical, idealistic representations of female beauty, now considered symbolic of the Quattrocento, became prevalent at the time due to the stylistic preferences of Medici art patrons.

The showing of Boticelli at the Musée Jacquemart-André is monumental because it is the first French exhibition in the past fifteen years to be devoted to the Medicis’ favorite painter. At first, the Musée Jacquemart-André was constructed as a private home more than 350 years after Botticelli’s death. Originally built as a home for banker-politician Édouard André and his wife, the society painter Nélie Jacquemart, the mansion served as an exhibition space for the childless couple’s shared passion—collecting art. Widowed in 1894, and nearly disinherited by Édouard’s cousins, Nélie willed her home to the ensured care of the Institut de France. After her death in 1912, the couple’s collection was made accessible to the public (before her death, she stipulated where each piece of work would be hung). The Musée Jacquemart-André opened its doors to visitors in 1913. 

Now, with its century-long tenure as a museum, the Musée Jacquemart-André has devoted its exhibitions to later French, Flemish, and Italian Renaissance artists, including: Uccello, Mantegna, and Della Robbbia. This variety creates an adroit setting for a journey through Botticelli’s individual works, serial paintings, and various objets d’art.

Although less is known about Botticelli’s personal life than that of other Renaissance masters, the exhibit illuminates the artist’s processes and his milieu, within the fitting, more personal setting of what was once a private home. “Botticelli, Artist and Designer,” will be on view at the Musée Jacquemart-André from 10 September 2021 to 24 January 2022.