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To appreciate the beauty of Botticelli's Venus, it is not necessary to believe that Venus arose from this sea-foam; in like manner, to enjoy Christian art it is not required that we accept the literal truth of its symbols. Indeed, it seems to me very doubtful whether many educated people to-day take the minor characters of the Christian pantheon very seriously.
Here the boys are perhaps, in Botticelli's way, typified rather than portrayed. Although this picture came so early in his career Botticelli never excelled its richness, beauty, and depth of feeling, nor its liquid delicacy of treatment.
He stopped to telegraph to Audrey the time he would be coming to-morrow afternoon; and on leaving the Post-Office, noticed in the window of the adjoining shop some reproductions of old Italian masterpieces, amongst them one of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus. He had never seen that picture; and, remembering that she had told him it was her favourite, he stopped to look at it.
Luca Signorelli's flowers at the Uffizi remain the best, but Botticelli's are very thoughtful and before the grass turned black they must have been very lovely; the exquisite drawing of the irises in the right-hand corner can still be traced, although the colour has gone. The effect now is rather like a Chinese painting. I spoke just now of Luca's flowers.
Through the filtered gloom of the demi-light Orde surveyed with interest the excellent reproductions of the Old World masterpieces framed on the walls "Madonnas" by Raphael, Murillo, and Perugino, the "Mona Lisa," and Botticelli's "Spring" the three oil portraits occupying the large spaces; the spindle-legged chairs and tables, the tea service in the corner, the tall bronze lamp by the piano, the neat little grate-hearth, with its mantel of marble; the ormolu clock, all the decorous and decorated gentility which marked the irreproachable correctness of whoever had furnished the apartment.
These pictures are the principal work of Botticelli's first period, which coincides with the five years of Piero's rule and the period of mourning for him.
The experiment was rather daring, but wholly successful, as she took care to have green leaves between her hair and the blossoms. When she went down, Madame and Alden were waiting for her, Alden in evening clothes as usual and Madame in her lavender gown. "You look like a nymph of Botticelli's," commented Alden, with a smile.
The hair, too, of both the Angel and the Virgin, waves in masses at once free and formal, with something of the wild beauty of Botticelli's windblown tresses.
Gather into a single room a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, Michelangelo's "Day and Night," Botticelli's "Spring," the sprites and children of Donatello and Delia Robbia, Velasquez's "Pope Innocent," Rembrandt's "Cloth-weavers," Frans Hals' "Musician," Millet's "Sower," Whistler's "Carlyle." There is here no thought of period or of school.
She was talking enthusiastically of Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, with occasional flying excursions into Switzerland and the Tyrol. Once, as she passed, I heard something murmured low about Botticelli's "Primavera"; when next she went by it was the Alps from Murren; a third time, again, it was the mosaics at St. Mark's, and Titian's "Assumption," and the doge's palace.
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