Museums and Art

The Annunciation, Sandro Botticelli, 1485 - description of the painting

The Annunciation, Sandro Botticelli, 1485 - description of the painting

The Annunciation - Sandro Botticelli. 19.1x31.4

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) worked during the transition from the quattrocento to the High Renaissance, but in his art there is little joy in the first and breathtaking greatness of the second. The artist in general has everything special - figures and faces, lines and shapes, even the law of universal gravitation has his own: his characters always soar slightly above the ground.

In this small-sized picture, Gabriel, appearing to Mary, is still flying, which can be seen not only in his fluttering wings and white train, which swells behind his back, but also in the air that fills the clothes of the archangel. And Mary, though bent to one knee, as if standing on an air cushion that carries Her to the messenger. This flight towards each other is visually suspended only by a colonnade with light drapery that separates the characters. The movement is felt in the angelic robe, the folds of which lie in bizarre waves, and in the flowing white curtain at the columns, but it is somewhat restrained by the strict architecture of the interior.

The colors of the artist are deep, but also airy. In the cloak of Mary there is a rich blue of the heavens and the seas (in Italy the Mother of God is also the patroness of sailors). Botticelli's sense of color was so subtle that there were many shades of white in the picture: the color of angelic attire, wings, lilies, marble columns or draperies is different. And all the paints of the painter - as if washed, new, not yet used by anyone. In his paintings morning always reigns.

The years when Botticelli created this “Annunciation"," For talented people were truly a golden age, "wrote Giorgio Vasari. This is the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his circle, which included the artist, where they were engaged in the arts. This is the heyday of Florence.

Watch the video: SANDRO BOTICELLI PAINTINGS (May 2021).