INTERVIEW WITH DR. ANDREAS SCHUMACHER

Art critic Annette Lettau in an interview with Dr. Andreas Schumacher, curator of the Botticelli exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. It runs from November 13, 2009 to February 28, 2010.

Only two painters still shape our idea of physical particularities. The "Rubens figure" is as much a term as the clear "Botticelli face". The work of the Florentine Renaissance master commonly stands for beauty, grace and restrained melancholy. But the art of Sandro Botticelli offers even more facets. In Berlin a few years ago, one could admire his drawings for the Dante cycle. However, a comprehensive exhibition of his works never took place in Germany. It is therefore spectacular that the Städel is now showing a cross-genre Botticelli exhibition for the first time. How did the museum manage this feat?

Of course, we used our contacts. Max Hollein - the director of our museum - and I had many conversations with potential lenders. In Florence, for example, in Washington, London, Paris, New York - we undertook numerous trips, visited our colleagues, presented our concept. And we were able to convince them. Decisive was that they saw: We are setting new scientific accents at the Städel. That ultimately made the difference, to send precious paintings like the Minerva and the Centaur in Florence, the almost life-size Venus in Berlin, or the four Zenobius panels, now reunited for the first time - otherwise housed in London, New York, and Dresden - on a journey.

What was the trigger for this project?

Apart from the artist's 500th anniversary of death in 2010, an outstanding masterpiece in the Städel was the decisive factor: Botticelli's portrait of an enigmatic beauty, presumably depicting Simonetta Vespucci. The Frankfurt ideal portrait is now the starting point of the exhibition. Simonetta was the tournament lady, the "Regina della Belleza" of Giuliano de' Medici, his platonic love, who was revered in poems as a nymph, but also as a chaste goddess. She was married and died young. Botticelli research long tended to want to recognize her in every graceful beauty that corresponded to the Simonetta type. At least in the female allegory of virtue in Minerva and the Centaur - a loan from the Uffizi - references to Simonetta and Giuliano's tournament are obvious.

The Städel is showing around forty paintings and drawings by the artist and his workshop. Given the fragility and preciousness of the exhibits, this is an impressive display. In addition, there are some forty works by contemporaries, including works by Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Filippino Lippi. What is new about the concept? To a modest extent, comparative examples were already shown in Paris and Florence in 2003/04.

Of course, we cannot present paintings here like The Birth of Venus or Primavera from the Uffizi. They are generally not loaned out. Our exhibition is divided into three thematic complexes: The first is dedicated to the portrait, the second to mythological allegories, a subject that distinguishes Botticelli's art in a very special way and sets it apart from the work of his colleagues. And the third part is dedicated to religious works, especially devotional images. But we are not only setting new accents with comparative examples. Several paintings by Botticelli from private collections will be exhibited for the first time, and several unknown drawings will be on display. All research results are compiled in the catalog.

We know very little about the life of Sandro Botticelli (1444/45-1510), who apparently left his hometown Florence only once for an extended period to paint the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. His most important patrons were the Medici, who long dominated politics in Florence. If one believes Giorgio Vasari's artist biographies published in 1550/1568, the painter later became a partisan of the penitential preacher Savonarola - with an impact on his work, as research suggests.

Research long relied on Vasari's tendentious biography, as the source material is so sparse. Today we read his biography more critically. Botticelli was probably not an active follower of Savonarola. The idea of him as a political artist is certainly also a delusion. Botticelli was a sought-after painter. He was apparently skillful enough to create a network and work for various patrons. This made him independent of the misfortunes that the Medici family had to endure.

But Botticelli also created propaganda images for the Medici, didn't he?

His large, often over-interpreted mythological allegories have often been interpreted as decidedly political. In doing so, it has been overlooked, among other things, how limited the circle of those who could see these works at the time was. The paintings usually hung in the private chambers of the Medici, rooms which certainly had a representative character but were only accessible to selected visitors. Apart from that, Botticelli's works were primarily read as moral allegories in their time.

Did the portrait of Giuliano de' Medici (from the National Gallery of Art in Washington) not have a political background? After all, there are even workshop repetitions, variants of the portrait. In the exhibition, the first and second versions can be compared.

These variants, however, provide a good example of how art could also be used for power politics. And this, even though it is primarily a private commemorative image. Lorenzo il Magnifico, who probably commissioned the portrait after his brother was murdered in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478, certainly wanted to make a statement with it. The portrait called for public mourning. But in all the works commissioned by the head of the Medici, other aspects also played a role: the Neoplatonic thought, for example, which shaped the Simonetta myth, or Lorenzo's desire to transform Florence into a new Athens.

Are such background details indispensable to grasp the distinctiveness of Botticelli's art?

The fascinating aspect of it, of course, also conveys itself without historical knowledge. Especially the melancholic magic and the enigmatic nature of Botticelli's paintings have essentially never worn out. But the exhibition also attempts to provide insight into how the works were embedded in the political events and humanistic discourses of the time. This applies to the assessment of Botticelli's late style, represented, for example, by the Zenobius panels: The change could be interpreted as a fundamental end-of-days mood in Florence at the end of the 15th century, which was reflected in Botticelli's serious religious works.

06.11.2009