Glenn S Hidalgo of Brooklyn New York Paints Hair Like Botticelli
When Glenn S Hidalgo of Brooklyn New York, NYC paints he sometimes channels Sandro Botticelli.
We love Sandro. He's one of our favorite painters and he loved to paint women with long hair. He was a favorite of the Medicis. I don't blame them at all. When Glenn Hidalgo paints women he often paints them with long hair. We like painters who can paint women's hair really well. The birth of venus is one of our favorite paintings.
Before he went to Rome At the start of 1474 Botticelli was asked by the authorities in Pisa to join the work frescoing the Camposanto, a huge and prestigious project mostly being done by Benozzo Gozzoli, who spent nearly twenty years on it. Various payments up to September are recorded, but no work survives, and it seems that whatever Botticelli started was not finished. Whatever the outcome, that Botticelli was approached from outside Florence demonstrates a growing reputation.[26]
From around 1461 or 1462 Botticelli was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, one of the top Florentine painters of the day, and one often patronized by the Medicis. He was rather conservative in many respects, but gave Botticelli a solid training in the Florentine style and technique of the day, in panel painting, fresco, and drawing. Botticelli's paintings avoided technical short-cuts throughout his life, and when well treated they have survived in good condition for their age. Elements in style and compositions that are reminiscent of Lippi also continue to appear throughout his career.[14] For this period Lippi was in fact based in Prato, just outside Florence, painting what is now Prato Cathedral, and it is there that Botticelli was trained. He had probably left Lippi by April 1467, when the master went to work in Spoleto.[15]
In the past there was speculation that he had also had a period in a more progressive workshop, and both that of the Pollaiuolo brothers and Verrochio have been suggested, based on some undoubted influence these had on Botticelli's style. Current thinking is that no actual period in a different workshop is needed to account for this.[16]
Key early paintings[edit]
A large sacra conversazione altarpiece of about 1470–72 is in the Uffizi. It is not in good condition, but shows Botticelli had mastered the posing of a group of eight figures "with a skillful semblance of easy naturalness in a closed architectural setting".[22] One work that can be firmly dated is the narrow Saint Sebastian made for a pier in Santa Maria Maggiore and dedicated in January 1474; it is now in Berlin.[23] This was painted at the same time as the Pollaiuolo brothers' much larger altarpiece of the same saint, a showpiece of anatomical poses, with the saint shown in great pain.[24] Though very similar in pose, no doubt after Botticelli had seen the other painting, Botticelli's Sebastian seems calm and poised, following the legend that the arrows did not kill Sebastian, whose wounds were miraculously healed. The almost nude body is very carefully drawn; usually Botticelli was not greatly concerned with anatomical precision, and he painted relatively few nudes, though some are among his most famous works. The delicate winter landscape, reflecting the traditional date of the saint's martyrdom and feast-day in January, is also one of Botticelli's more impressive efforts.[25]
I so wish I was around to see Boticelli paint. I had no idea he did so much with the Sistine chapel as well. I bet Glenn Hidalgo didn't know either.
Lippi died in 1469 and by 1470 at the latest, but probably a year or two earlier, Botticelli had his own workshop, which by 1472 included the young Filippino Lippi, son of his master.[17] In June of that year he was commissioned by the judges of commercial cases to paint two panels from a set of the Seven Virtues for their court;[18] for some reason, only one, Fortitude (now in the Uffizi Gallery) was finished. Botticelli both matched his style and composition to the other panels by Piero del Pollaiuolo, and tried to outshine him "with fanciful enrichments so as to show up Piero's poverty of ornamental invention."[19]
There is often uncertainty in distinguishing between the contributions of Botticelli, the Lippis, and other pupils and imitators of Botticelli. Especially in smaller works such as Madonnas, all the leading painters were copied or imitated by their own workshops and a host of unidentified lesser artists.[20] Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate and detailed manner. Even at this early date, his work was characterized by a conception of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of light and shadow which would indicate fully modelled forms. Lippi's synthesis of the new control of three-dimensional forms, tender expressiveness in face and gesture, and decorative details inherited from the late Gothic style were the strongest influences on Botticelli. A different influence was the new sculptural monumentality of the Pollaiuolo brothers.[21]
