Botticelli, Savonarola, and the Politics of Late Quattrocento Florence

MRP Goal

This site was creating using the Major Research Project completed for Elizabeth Colantoni's MA from the University of Guelph.

In addition to the creation of countless artistic masterpieces and the dissemination of Humanist literature and ideology, Quattrocento Florence is undoubtedly identified with the rule of the Medici. This leading and influential family functioned as the city’s unofficial rulers during the 15^th century.[1] While the illusion and basic workings of a republic were still maintained, the Medici conducted themselves and their business with the upmost authority. The Medici effectively controlled the Signoria[2], commissioned works by leading artists and authors, and, most importantly, they were powerful bankers. Despite ushering in eras of peace, prosperity, and unity[3], towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Medici began to increasingly fall out of favour with the Florentine populace. It was not long before partisans began to rebel against Medici influence in public governance. Two of significant anti-Medici events form the political and contextual backdrop for this essay: the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478, and the ushering in of a true Florentine Republic in 1494.

This Major Research Project will engage with Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and Fra Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) as political figures who reacted visually and performatively to these events of late Quattrocento Florence. Selected works by Botticelli will be read as coded visual responses to the transition from Medici rule to their expulsion, while Savonarola’s sermons will be read as religiopolitical treatises in which he proclaims his visions for the spiritual and bureaucratic reforms for Florence. Allegorical works from Botticelli’s later period and Savonarola’s Haggai[4]/ Aggeus sermons provide insight into this major political shift in Florence. The subjects of this analysis are as follows: Punishment of the Sons of Korah, 1480-1482, Sistine Chapel, fresco; Pallas and the Centaur, 1482, Uffizi, tempera on panel; Calumny of Apelles, 1494-1495, Uffizi, tempera on panel; and The Story of Lucretia, 1496-1504, Boston - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, tempera on oil and wood; Aggeus, Sermon VII: 28 November 1494; Aggeus, Sermon XIII: 12 December 1494; and Aggeus, Sermon XXIII: 28 December 1494.

            The socio-political readings of these works by Botticelli will provide a counter-narrative to the existing notion of the painter as an artist dealing exclusively with mythological, humanistic, classical, and religious subject matters. These analyses aim to argue that he can also be perceived as a painter who used classical references as political allegories. Close readings of these sermons by Savonarola will work to illustrate how religion and politics were intertwined in the Renaissance, especially in a time of political uncertainty. Furthermore, they will demonstrate how he was able to publicly act as the spiritual and diplomatic protector of Florence.