Botticelli

[Вивьен]

From 1492 to 1500. Botticelli creates the epic cycle of drawings of illustrations to The Divine Comedy of Dante. Images are made metal pins on large sheets of parchment. Almost all of them circled in pen. Each song is dedicated to one figure. Several drawings to "Paradise" is not finished, but to HHH1 song "Purgatory," the wizard, do two versions of the picture. One of these two figures is in the collection of Andrea Kastillesa, famous art collector, co-founder of the auction house «Sotbyes».

In this illustration, describing an apocalyptic vision, on the sides of the sacred convoy, driven seven angels, we see biblical animals: the eagle, a winged bull, a winged lion and the angel-man with the book. In Beatrice, sitting in a cart drawn by a griffin.


"Dvukolaya, between the four animals

Win wagon rose,

And Griffin was harnessed to it. "

(Dante's "Divine Comedy", "Purgatory" ch.XXXI)

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- Pay attention to the human figure in the bottom of the illustrations, welcomes the process - he explains Kastilles - what you see next to him? This - BICYCLE!

Stunned, we bent over the yellowed parchment and began to carefully looking at the picture.

Meanwhile, the hall has already run in a special trolley konteyner.Ego massive front wall was made of thick glass. Behind glass we saw a small picture, which was depicted in a color wheel is very similar to the one we just looked at the illustration to the "Divine Comedy"


"- This is a very rare work by Botticelli, - said Andrea, - yes, do not worry, it's not fake! You, as scientists say: a comparative analysis of spectral and chemical composition of tempera paint, soil and even the fibers of wood, and this other works by Botticelli, the portrait "Sv.Avgustina (1495g.). Compositions are identical. By the way, the background of the St. Augustine and of this film are very similar. Apparently Botticelli created both works in the same time. In the peculiarities of the decoration of this, obviously, the female version of the bike visible link with the earlier masters masterpiece "Birth of Venus." Critics have found that during the life of Botticelli's this "portrait of a bicycle" has not found acceptance among the audience. contemporaries apparently did not understand what is depicted here. For me, also remains a mystery: how come Botticelli to the idea of such an unusual work, why a bicycle is clearly a woman's? "And where might" Divine Comedy "? Bicycle Beatrice? you - scientists, you find answers ...

Shortly after his death the picture was completely forgotten for a long time kept at the State Museum in Berlin, had disappeared during the Second World War and came to me quite by accident, but that's another story ...

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