After almost twenty years of absence in France, Botticelli is making his comeback at the Jacquemart-André museum, which is dedicating a very fine exhibition to the Master until January 24, 2022.
The exhibition, which benefits from loans from the Parisian Louvre, the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Vatican, the Uffizi, the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Bargello National Museum in Florence (yes, that’s a crowd), presents some forty masterpieces by the Florentine Master of the Renaissance.
Beyond the masterpieces, the exhibition proposed by the Jacquemart-André museum highlights Botticelli’s working methods, his pure creation and his role as workshop manager. Because the artist alternated personal creation and production carried out by his workshop. Soon a victim of his success with the Medici, who swore only by his art, the artist ran a workshop whose production was very thoughtful: his preparatory drawings served as basis for the paintings executed by his assistants. However, each painting was subject to the Master’s extremely close supervision.
To quote Pierre Curie, curator of the Jacquemart-André museum and specialist in Italian painting, Botticelli “was the Philippe Starck of his time”, that is to say a designer, and – under the aegis of his protectors the Medici – an incredible businessman.
Beyond this interesting light on the Master’s working methods, the paintings are pure marvels.
December 22, 2021
