An Unpublished Essay by Mary Berenson, ‘Botticelli and his Critics’ (1894–95)

An unpublished essay written in 1894–95 by Mary Berenson offers the first extended analysis of ‘the immense popularity among cultivated Anglo-Saxons’ of Botticelli. Written in collaboration with Bernard Berenson, it offers the idiosyncratic view that the dreamy aspect of Botticelli’s figures results from the tension between the artist’s interest in both linearity and unidealized naturalism. The ‘indeterminate’ appearance of his works appealed to fifteenth-century viewers, who vacillated between Christian and ‘Renaissance’ values, and to modern observers, who were similarly undecided between religion and modernity. The Pre-Raphaelites, for example, revealed ‘a dissatisfaction with the present that leads them to take refuge’ in Renaissance dreams, but this was due in part to their mistaken acceptance of workshop paintings as works by Botticelli himself. Their flawed approach was compounded by the writings of Ruskin and Pater. The science of connoisseurship, as developed by the Berensons, is required to truly understand Botticelli.