Looking at Botticelli

ABSTRACT

The author writes about the recent exhibition of Botticelli’s art, primarily focused on his drawings, that was presented at the San Francisco Legion of Honor. Botticelli lived in Florence during the Early Italian Renaissance. A brief overview of Botticelli’s life and his times is provided. Although he was well regarded as an artist during his lifetime, his art was largely forgotten for nearly four hundred years. Botticelli’s reputation grew during the twentieth century and he continues to command our attention. This essay explores the psychological reasons for our attraction to his art. Botticelli was highly talented at drawing and painting the human form, and he gave creative emphasis to the eyes. His emphasis on both may not have been entirely coincidental. He seemed to have known that appreciation of art occurs within a field including the artist, their creation, and the viewer.

KEY WORDS:

• art
• bodies
• Botticelli
• drawing
• eyes
• field theory
• painting
• Renaissance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The catalog of the exhibition, entitled Botticelli Drawings, is well written and thoughtfully edited. It stands out as an important, new contribution to understanding Botticelli the artist and his work. It includes fascinating essays by Furio Rinaldi, Cecilia Frosinini, Lorenza Melli, and Jonathan Nelson. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Botticelli. Photographs of Head of a Young Man in Near Profile Looking Left and Portrait of a Lady at the Window are by Robert Tyminski.

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Tyminski

ROBERT TYMINSKI (USA) is an adult and child analyst member of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and a past president; he also teaches in the Institute’s analytic training program. A 2016 winner of the Michael Fordham Prize from the Journal of Analytical Psychology, Dr. Tyminski is the author of Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace (Routledge, 2018), Crooked Lines (2016), and The Psychology of Theft and Loss: Stolen and Fleeced (Routledge, 2014). His newest book, The Psychological Effects of Immigrating: A Depth Psychology Perspective on Relocating to a New Place, came out in late 2022. Correspondence: [email protected].