Neroccio and Botticelli the Sienese and the Florentine
By Donald Rock
Although the two Italian cities of Florence and Siena are less than one hundred miles apart, they have produced artists with two distinctly different pictorial styles. Two works that demonstrate these differences between Florentine and Sienese style, can be found at the Norton Simon Museum of art in Pasadena, California: Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna and Child with Adoring Angel, c. 1468, and Neroccio de’ Landi’s Madonna and Child with Saints, c. 1480. While these works share basically the same subject matter, their content and visual characteristics are very different.
In Italy during the fourteenth century there were two main centers of art development: Florence and Siena. In the fifteenth century the center of art seems to have moved to Florence alone, and when considering fifteenth century art production and innovation, many art historians shift their attention to Florence, whereby Siena is considered to have peeked artistically and its artists unable to progress past their medieval style (Cole, Preface). Author Bernard Berenson makes the following conclusion regarding fifteenth century Siena: “The school of Siena fails to rank among the great schools of art because its painters never devoted themselves with the needed zeal to form and movement” (Berenson, 104). This so-called lack of zeal and progression is largely due to Sienese artists’ concern with their past and traditional art styles (Cole, 114), which isn’t as much a concern with Florentine artists. Florence on the other hand, is seen to have progressed much further in pictorial representation since the Middle Ages because of its rare concentration of technically and intellectually gifted artists (Berenson, 39). Relating to the spirit of Florence during the fifteenth century, Berenson says that the Florentine artists “left no form of expression untried”, they were “tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this endeavor each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms essentially his own” (Berenson, 39). Much of this expression through forms can be seen in paintings by artists such as Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, and Sandro Botticelli. The conception of artistic stagnation in Siena is somewhat supported in the work of fifteenth century artist, Neroccio de’ Landi, whose style is much like that of artists 180 years earlier, such as Duccio Di Buoninsegna. Certain design elements and concepts did trickle into Siena from Florence, as Berenson describes: “But stealthily and mysteriously the new visual imagery, the new feeling for beauty, found its way to Siena . . . And the old feeling for line, for splendid surface, for effects rudimentarily decorative, mingled with the new ideals” (Berenson, 103). Florentine art concepts may have worked their way into Siena, but Neroccio’s Madonna and Child shows little Florentine influence, as will be described in the following text.
Stylistically, Neroccio’s work has two characteristics that look much like Byzantine art; which is his incorporation of a gold background and a very formal setting. His Madonna and Child does deviate somewhat from this twelfth century style though, in that he uses a moderate amount of chiaroscuro (the use of gradations of light and dark to produce the effect of modeling), which breaks away from the pure flatness of medieval paintings. Also his style presents the Madonna with a slightly tilted head and his saint in a three-quarter turn, which also contrasts with the frontal rigidity of paintings centuries before. Compared to his Florentine contemporaries however, Neroccio’s style is still very formal and does, only slightly, convey the warmth, emotion, or the sense of closeness between the Madonna and her child that his Florentine counterpart Botticelli does. Botticelli’s Madonna and Child, which was done approximately fourteen years before Neroccio’s, depicts a mother and child bond in which they are holding one another as well as touching their heads together in a clear gesture of closeness and love. Neroccio depicts a mother and child in a more distant manner. The Madonna supports her child’s back with one hand and gently strokes his face with the other, while her head is actually tilting away from her child. There seems to be some eye contact on the part of the child but none from the mother; her gaze being directed off of the picture plane. The Madonna’s facial expression shows an almost reserved or uncertain feeling of kindness or caring for the Christ child through the way Neroccio painted her half smile and narrow, almond shaped eyes. Both works have a commonality in the expression of the Madonna though; they portray a Madonna whose thought seems to be elsewhere while their child looks toward their mother for comfort.
Neroccio displays certain humanistic qualities in his painting, such as the subtle emotional gestures discussed earlier. Berenson claims Neroccio has a “refined feeling for beauty” and has “ideals and emotions more akin to our own, with . . . suggestions of freshness and joy” (Berenson, 103). He seems to be expressing, through this piece, a level of dignity, elegance, and “heavenly beauty” (Cole, 109). His representation and interpretation of this classic subject conveys a message of divine beings that are perhaps not entirely godlike but more human in nature. His reference to divinity is illustrated by the gold background and halos surrounding the heads of each figure. The quiet formality and seriousness of this piece also lends to its divine or majestic qualities. When describing Neroccio’s Madonnas, author Enzo Carli states, “They may be regarded as the last, tender incarnations of a stylistic and spiritual ideal of a remote age, but made miraculously modern once again by his awareness of artistic values and by the intellectual atmosphere of the mature Renaissance” (Carli, 70). Carli is referring to Neroccoi’s commitment to Sienese tradition but from a perspective of someone who is aware of contemporary ideals and methods outside of Sienese art culture. Botticelli’s interpretation of the Madonna and Child seems to be one of elegance, peace, and humility. His is a quiet, pleasant scene of a mother and child holding one another in an earthly environment. Botticelli’s background consists not of a gold otherworldly, divine orientation but of an earthbound one. The angel in Botticell’s piece is in a profile view while the eyes of both the Madonna and her child look downward and upward respectively. These characteristics lend to the more informal impact of Botticelli’s work, as there is no eye contact with the viewer. He presents an angel whose wings are out of the picture and looks like any other person. The only elements that have a heavenly association are the faint halos around the mother and child’s heads. Combined, these forms and expressions create something that the average viewer could possibly relate to while also giving it greater humanistic qualities than Neroccio’s work.
Neroccio portrays the figures in his Madonna and Child in a somewhat abstracted, and idealized way. This is demonstrated in the smooth texture of their skin, the elongated necks, and perfect egg shaped heads (Cole, 107). Instead of visual realism or optical reality, Neroccio is striving for as author Bruce Cole states, “heavenly beauty” (Cole, 109). Cole describes these traits as “seen in the arched eyebrows, eyes, long nose, shapely mouth, slender neck, and, above all, the poised and mannered hands” (Cole, 109). Neroccio’s idealized forms are then accentuated by his use of line, and although both artists do make use of the line element, Neroccio’s use of line is more pronounced in the simple curved delineation of forms that make up his Madonna and saints. Author Gertrude Coor recognizes his use of line as she concludes that one characteristic of his art is “the emphasis on flexible, assertive lines” which she says is seen throughout much of his work (Coor, 131). Again describing Neroccio’s style (use of line) and its origins is author Enzo Carli: “But the truly unmistakable feature of his style is his sense of line, and it is this which binds him more closely than any other painter of his own or preceding generations to the pure tradition of Simone Martini [A Sienese artist who carried out the ideals of Duccio (1280-1319) who “launched the Sienese style and gave it much of the shape it was to assume for the following centuries” (Cole, 4).]” (Carli, 69). This gives us a good sense of the artistic tradition that was going on in Siena at this time in which Neroccio was a part of. Getting back to the element of line, Botticelli’s use of this element is not as noticeable because of the way he has modeled his figures with finer gradations of light and shade; but simple lines are used to augment his chiaroscuro and are readily apparent in the geometric features of his painting such as the archway and table.
Space is an element that was used to greater effect by Botticelli. He creates the illusion of space for the figures in his Madonna and Child piece through the depiction of a table in the foreground, a part of a column in the middle ground, and an arch in the background, in which he uses linear perspective throughout. This method for creating space has been around for some time in Florence as indicated by author Alfonz Lengyel: “The importance of the use of architectural backgrounds to achieve a better sensation of space was indicated early in the works of Giotto [c. 1266-1337]” (Lengyel, 42). Botticelli uses this technique of using architectural forms, combined with linear perspective, and an arch which opens up to a natural landscape with trees, a road, and a blue sky, to effectively give his painting an open, airy feel. Color values are manipulated to effectively model his forms in order to give the spatial quality of depth and of three-dimensional mass. In contrast, Neroccio created no architectural space for his figures as they are depicted in front of a flat gold background. However, his Madonna figure is portrayed in the foreground and the two other adult figures are behind, standing to either side of her. This creates an overlapping of figures in which he diminishes the size of the figures in the background, thereby creating a slight illusion of depth. Neroccio does not use chiaroscuro as effectively as Botticelli though, as his figures still have a flat look to them. Neroccio’s shading seems to be of a single value with little use of gradations from light to dark.
Compositionally, Neroccio creates balance and symmetry with the arrangement of his four figures; two of them being to either side of the centered and larger Madonna and child. Botticelli creates balance and harmony by other means. The heads of his figures form a diagonal which slices through the upper one third of the picture plane, together adding unity to his figural forms. This diagonal along with the portrayed eye direction of his figures creates a focal point that converges from both ends of the diagonal on the Madonna and child as they embrace one another. The convergence however, is off center, but is balanced by the contrasting color and forms of the landscape to the left of them. The landscape in Botticelli’s work is not only a balance aspect but as author Wilhelm Bode points out, “the landscapes in the background . . . do play a not unimportant part, still their whole purpose . . . is merely decorative” (Bode, 35). Also relating to composition is the crowded feel that Neroccio’s piece has, which is described by Bruce Cole: “It is though there is not enough room for them [Madonna and Saints] to exist; the frame seems to compress them, giving the work a claustrophobic quality that is at odds with the lilting forms of the Madonna and her child” (Cole, 109). This idea of presenting figural forms in such a tight space just adds to this pieces formality and contrasts with Botticelli’s more naturalistic setting.
Some of the differences in the styles of Neroccio and Botticelli can be attributed to the cultural contexts of both painters. Neroccio comes from a city in which painting follows certain traditional guidelines in which few new artistic ideas were adopted from his neighboring Florence. The Florentines however, powered by an art culture full of naturalistic, classicistic, and humanistic beliefs, were always striving to understand the world around them, while inventing and exploring new ways of interpretation and representation. As has been shown, two Italian artists from two different cities, with two different ways of thinking, can use the same subject in order to deliver, sometimes similar and other times different, meanings through unique and individual styles of representation.
Works Cited
Lengyel, Alfonz. The Quattrocento. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1971.
Bode, Wilhelm. Sandro Botticelli. London: Methuen, 1925.
Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting: In the Age of the Renaissance. Bloomington: IU Press, 1985.
Coor, Gertrude. Neroccio De’ Landi. Princeton: P. University Press, 1961.
Carli, Enzo. Sienese Painting. Greenwich: N.Y. Graphic Soc., 1956.
Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1952.
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