Editing Sandro Botticelli (section)

==Last years==
[[File:Sandro Botticelli La calumnia de Apeles.jpg|thumb|''[[Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli)|Calumny of Apelles]],'' c. 1494–95, [[Uffizi]], Florence]]
According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the deeply moralistic [[Dominican Order|Dominican friar]] [[Girolamo Savonarola]], who preached in Florence from 1490 until his [[Burning at the stake|execution]] in 1498:<ref name="auto6">Vasari, 152.</ref>

<blockquote>Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola's, and this was why he gave up painting and then fell into considerable distress as he had no other source of income. None the less, he remained an obstinate member of the sect, becoming one of the ''piagnoni'', the snivellers, as they were called then, and abandoning his work; so finally, as an old man, he found himself so poor that if Lorenzo de' Medici ... and then his friends and ... [others] had not come to his assistance, he would have almost died of hunger.<ref name="auto6"/></blockquote>

The extent of Savonarola's influence on Botticelli remains uncertain; his brother Simone was more clearly a follower.<ref>Hartt, 335–336; Davies, 105–106; Ettlingers, 13–14.</ref> The story, sometimes seen, that he had destroyed his own paintings on secular subjects in the [[bonfire of the vanities#Savonarola|1497 bonfire of the vanities]] <!-- do not capitalise or italicise: there were many such bonfires, see the article --> is not told by Vasari. Vasari's assertion that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under the influence of Savonarola is not accepted by modern art historians. ''[[The Mystical Nativity (Botticelli)|The Mystical Nativity]]'', Botticelli's only painting to carry an actual date, if one cryptically expressed, comes from late 1500,<ref>Ettlingers, 14; Vasari, 152.</ref> eighteen months after Savonarola died, and the development of his style can be traced through a number of late works, as discussed below. 
[[File:Suicide lucretia.jpg|thumb|300px|''[[The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli)|The Story of Lucretia]]'', c. 1500, [[Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum]], Boston, Massachusetts.]]

In late 1502, some four years after Savonarola's death, [[Isabella d'Este]] wanted a painting done in Florence. Her agent Francesco Malatesta wrote to inform her that her first choice, Perugino, was away, Filippino Lippi had a full schedule for six months, but Botticelli was free to start at once, and ready to oblige. She preferred to wait for Perugino's return.<ref name="auto"/> This again casts serious doubt on Vasari's assertion, but equally he does not seem to have been in great demand.<ref>Ettlingers, 14; Legouix, 18.</ref>

Many datings of works have a range up to 1505, though he did live a further five years.<ref>Legouix, 18; Dempsey.</ref> But Botticelli apparently produced little work after 1501, or perhaps earlier, and his production had already reduced after about 1495. This may be partly because of the time he devoted to the drawings for the manuscript Dante.<ref name="auto3"/> In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where [[Michelangelo]]'s ''[[David (Michelangelo)|David]]'' would be placed.<ref>Legouix, 18; Ettlingers, 203.</ref>

Botticelli returned to subjects from antiquity in the 1490s, with a few smaller works on subjects from ancient history containing more figures and showing different scenes from each story, including moments of dramatic action. These are the ''[[Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli)|Calumny of Apelles]]'' (c. 1494–95), a recreation of a lost [[allegory]] by the ancient Greek painter [[Apelles]], which he may have intended for his personal use,<ref>Lightbown, 230–237; Legouix, 114;.</ref> and the pair of ''[[The Story of Virginia (Botticelli)|The Story of Virginia]]'' and ''[[The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli)|The Story of Lucretia]]'', which are probably from around 1500.<ref>Lightbown, 260–269; Legouix, 82–83.</ref>
[[File:Boticelli - Mystische Geburt.jpeg|thumb|upright|left|250px|[[The Mystical Nativity (Botticelli)|''The Mystical Nativity'']], {{circa|1500–01}}, [[National Gallery]], London]]

''[[The Mystical Nativity]]'', a relatively small and very personal painting, perhaps for his own use, appears to be dated to the end of 1500.<ref>Davies, 103–106.</ref> It takes to an extreme the abandonment of consistent scale among the figures that had been a feature of Botticelli's religious paintings for some years, with the Holy Family much larger than the other figures, even those well in front of them in the picture space.<ref>Lightbown, 221–223.</ref> This may be seen as a partial reversion to Gothic conventions. The [[iconography]] of the familiar [[Nativity of Jesus in art|subject of the Nativity]] is unique, with features including devils hiding in the rock below the scene, and must be highly personal.<ref>Lightbown, 248–253; Dempsey; Ettlingers, 96–103.</ref>

Another painting, known as the ''[[Mystic Crucifixion]]'' (now [[Fogg Art Museum]] at [[Harvard University]]), clearly relates to the state, and fate, of Florence, shown in the background behind Christ on the Cross, beside which an angel whips a [[marzocco]], the heraldic lion that is a symbol of the city. This can be connected more directly to the convulsions of the expulsion of the Medici, Savonarola's brief supremacy, and the French invasion. Unfortunately it is very damaged, such that it may not be by Botticelli, while it is certainly in his style.<ref>Lightbown, 242–247; Ettlingers, 103–105. Lightbown connects it more specifically to Savonarola than the Ettlingers.</ref>

His later work, especially as seen in the four panels with ''[[Scenes from the Life of Saint Zenobius]]'', witnessed a diminution of scale, expressively distorted figures, and a non-naturalistic use of colour reminiscent of the work of [[Fra Angelico]] nearly a century earlier. Botticelli has been compared to the Venetian painter [[Carlo Crivelli]], some ten years older, whose later work also veers away from the imminent [[High Renaissance]] style, instead choosing to "move into a distinctly Gothic idiom".<ref>Legouix, 11–12; Dempsey.</ref> Other scholars have seen premonitions of [[Mannerism]] in the simplified expressionist depiction of emotions in his works of the last years.<ref>Hartt, 334, 337.</ref>

Ernst Steinmann (d. 1934) detected in the later Madonnas a "deepening of insight and expression in the rendering of Mary's [[physiognomy]]", which he attributed to Savonarola's influence (also pushing back the dating of some of these Madonnas.)<ref>Steinmann, Ernst, [https://archive.org/stream/botticelli00steiuoft#page/28/mode/2up ''Botticelli'', 26–28].</ref> More recent scholars are reluctant to assign direct influence, though there is certainly a replacement of elegance and sweetness with forceful austerity in the last period.

Botticelli continued to pay his dues to the Compagnia di San Luca (a [[confraternity]] rather than the [[artist's guild]]) until at least October 1505;<ref>Lightbown, 303–304.</ref> the tentative date ranges assigned to his late paintings run no further than this. By then he was aged sixty or more, in this period definitely into old age. Vasari, who lived in Florence from around 1527, says that Botticelli died "ill and decrepit, at the age of seventy-eight", after a period when he was "unable to stand upright and moving around with the help of crutches".<ref name="auto2">Vasari, 154.</ref> He died in May 1510, but is now thought to have been something under seventy at the time. He was buried with his family outside the [[Ognissanti, Florence|Ognissanti Church]] in a spot the church has now built over.<ref>Lightbown, 305; Ettlingers, 15.</ref> This had been his parish church since he was baptized there, and contained his ''[[Saint Augustine in His Study (Botticelli, Ognissanti)|Saint Augustine in His Study]]''.<ref>Lightbown, 17.</ref>