It is not unknown for tourists to faint in front of Botticelli’s 1486 masterpiece The Birth of Venus. Such swoons of delight have been labelled “Stendhal syndrome” after the French novelist, who first reported feeling overwhelmed by the art and monuments of Florence in 1817. Those who emerge today from the Uffizi Gallery needing a lie-down explain that it is because of the sheer beauty of Botticelli’s strawberry-blond goddess, arriving on land in her giant scallop shell. The image, at once fleshy and refined, luscious and bookish, is the perfect picture of an earthly paradise.
All of which makes it strange that, for centuries, Botticelli was a forgotten name. Or, if he was remembered at all, it was as a minor painter whose synthetic charm represented everything that was glib and superficial about Renaissance art. As Joseph Luzzi explains in this elegant exploration of “what happened next”, it was Giorgio Vasari, the immensely influential author of The Lives of the Artists (1568), who really did for Botticelli’s long-term prospects. Vasari dismissed him as a bit of a plodder, a hack whose work never acquired “any sense of liveliness” or “harmonious blending of colours”. Vasari’s vote would always go to the bigger boys, Michelangelo and Leonardo.
