Botticelli as a Colorist

Abstract

EXCELLENCE of color is not among the qualities for which Florentine painting is generally known. However, during the two centuries from Giotto to Michelangelo Florence produced a far from negligible number of fine colorists. Perhaps the great and obvious concern of the fifteenth century Florentine painter for the convincing representation of form and space—though rightly stressed by critics and historians—has blunted the attention given to other aspects of his art. Possibly the low esteem in which the color of this school is held may stem in part from the strong influence of such a notable critic as Berenson.¹ Perhaps a much earlier writer must share the responsibility, Leonardo da Vinci, whose thoughts about art are better known than those of any other Florentine of the time. For time and again Leonardo mentions the importance of relief. It seemed to him a marvelous thing, as it must have seemed to many others, that painting “can make a thing stand out in relief and appear detached from the wall when in fact it is not.”² Leonardo's disparaging remarks about good colorists may have helped, moreover, to establish a false conception of his own attitude; for his does not remain unchanged from part to part of the Trattato.