The "Chigi Madonna From the painting by Botticelli in the possession of IN N attempting to treat of Botticelli's works in a chronological order, I feel that I have undertaken a somewhat venturesome task. All the more so as I have no fresh documentary evidence to bring forward in support of the order in which I have here placed them. Some system of classification was, however, indispensable; and I have been induced to adopt a chronological system because it seems to me that a classification according to period (though in the case of this artist's works it is beset with difficulties) is clearer and more critical than a classification according to subject. The latter plan-which has been followed by several of Botticelli's biographers, who have dealt with his pictures under the headings of religious works, allegorical works, historical works, portraits, etc.-is attended by serious disadvantages. It obliges the writer to treat of early works side by side with late ones; to overlook all the affinities of type, style, and feeling which link certain pictures together as productions of the same period; and to relinquish the effort to reconstruct the artist's life-work in the order of its natural development. Although there is as yet no direct clue to the dates of the majority of Botticelli's pictures, yet the dates of a few of them have been ascertained either by docu mentary, or very strong circumstantial, evidence. There is every reason to believe, for example, that the St. Sebastian belongs to the year 1473 and the Pallas to 1480; and we know that the Sistine frescoes were executed in 1481-1483, the “Bardi" Altarpiece in 1485, the Lemmi frescoes in 1486, and The Nativity in 1500. These works act as landmarks which, appearing at intervals through almost the whole of Botticelli's artistic career, indicate the distinguishing characteristics of his various phases of development. By comparing the remainder of his works both with one another and with those already dated, noting their analogies with the latter and classifying them accordingly, we are able approximately to group them into periods, and to form some idea of the order of their execution. A chronological method, therefore, has the advantage of necessitating a close study of the works not only in themselves, but in their relation to one another as the products of successive stages in the artist's development; and it aims at following step by step the course of his career. For these reasons I have, though with much diffidence, ventured to adopt it. I think I may claim to have read every important contribution to Botticellian literature (as well as some unimportant ones); and while I gratefully acknowledge my immense indebtedness to many of the writings in question, I have not followed any one writer entirely. Wherever I have differed from acknowledged authorities (who are not always agreed amongst themselves) I have endeavoured to state clearly my reasons for doing so, leaving it to the Reader to judge what these reasons may be worth. The works from which I have received the most assist |