Editing Sandro Botticelli (section)

==Dante, printing and manuscripts==
[[File:Baccio Baldini - Inferno I.JPG|thumb|Engraving by [[Baccio Baldini]] after Botticelli]] 
Botticelli had a lifelong interest in the great Florentine poet [[Dante Alighieri]], which produced works in several media.<ref>Lightbown, 16–17, 86–87.</ref> He is attributed with an imagined portrait.<ref>Dante's features were well-known, from his death mask and several earlier paintings. Botticelli's aquiline version influenced many later depictions.</ref> According to Vasari, he "wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante", which is also referred to dismissively in another story in the ''Life'',<ref>Vasari, 152, 154.</ref> but no such text has survived.

Botticelli's attempt to design the illustrations for a printed book was unprecedented for a leading painter, and though it seems to have been something of a flop, this was a role for artists that had an important future.<ref>Landau, 35, 38.</ref> Vasari wrote disapprovingly of the first printed Dante in 1481 with [[engraving]]s by the goldsmith [[Baccio Baldini]], engraved from drawings by Botticelli: "being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante and [[Divine Comedy illustrated by Botticelli|illustrated the ''Inferno'']] which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstention from work led to serious disorders in his living."<ref>Vasari, 152, a different translation.</ref> Vasari, who lived when [[printmaking]] had become far more important than in Botticelli's day, never takes it seriously, perhaps because his own paintings did not sell well in reproduction.

[[File:Botticelli Inferno XVIII.png|thumb|left|One of the few fully coloured pages of the [[Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli]], illustrating canto XVIII in the eighth circle of Hell. Dante and Virgil descending through the ten chasms of the circle via a ridge.]]
The ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' consists of 100 [[canto]]s and the printed text left space for one engraving for each canto. However, only 19 illustrations were engraved, and most copies of the book have only the first two or three. The first two, and sometimes three, are usually printed on the book page, while the later ones are printed on separate sheets that are pasted into place. This suggests that the production of the engravings lagged behind the printing, and the later illustrations were pasted into the stock of printed and bound books, and perhaps sold to those who had already bought the book. Unfortunately, Baldini was neither very experienced nor talented as an engraver, and was unable to express the delicacy of Botticelli's style in his plates.<ref>Lightbown, 89; Landau, 108; Dempsey.</ref> Two religious engravings are also generally accepted to be after designs by Botticelli.<ref name="auto">Lightbown, 302.</ref>

Botticelli later began a luxury [[Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli|manuscript illustrated Dante]] on [[parchment]], most of which was taken only as far as the [[underdrawing]]s, and only a few pages are fully illuminated. This manuscript has 93 surviving pages (32&nbsp;×&nbsp;47&nbsp;cm), now divided between the [[Vatican Library]] (8 sheets) and the [[Kupferstichkabinett Berlin|Kupferstichkabinett]], Berlin (83), and represents the bulk of Botticelli's surviving drawings.<ref>Lightbown, 280; some are drawn on both sides of the sheet.</ref>

Once again, the project was never completed, even at the drawing stage, but some of the early cantos appear to have been at least drawn but are now missing. The pages that survive have always been greatly admired, and much discussed, as the project raises many questions. The general consensus is that most of the drawings are late; the main scribe can be identified as Niccolò Mangona, who worked in Florence between 1482 and 1503, whose work presumably preceded that of Dante. Botticelli then appears to have worked on the drawings over a long period, as stylistic development can be seen, and matched to his paintings. Although other patrons have been proposed (inevitably including Medicis, in particular the younger Lorenzo, or il Magnifico), some scholars think that Botticelli made the manuscript for himself.<ref>Dempsey; Lightbown, 280–282, 290.</ref>

There are hints that Botticelli may have worked on illustrations for printed [[pamphlet]]s by Savonarola, almost all destroyed after his fall.<ref>Landau, 95.</ref><gallery>
File:Sandro Botticelli - Purgatory X - WGA02860.jpg|Purgatory X
File:Sandro Botticelli - Drawings for Dante´s Divine Comedy (Purgatorio 17) - Google Art Project.jpg|Purgatorio XVII
File:Sandro Botticelli - Drawings for Dante´s Divine Comedy (Purgatorio 31) - Google Art Project.jpg|Purgatorio XXXI
File:Sandro Botticelli - Paradise, Canto XXX - WGA02862.jpg|Paradise, Canto XXX
File:Sandro Botticelli - Inferno, Canto XXXI - WGA02856.jpg|Inferno, Canto XXXI
</gallery>