Savonarola, and has left a manuscript chronicle which is one of the best sources for the history of the friar and of his movement. Sandro himself seems to have remained aloof from the movement almost until the date of the execution of Savonarola and his two followers in 1498. At least there is clear evidence of his being in the confidence and employ of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco so late as 1496 and 1497, which he could not possibly have been had he then been an avowed member of the party of the Piagnoni. It was probably the enforced departure of Lorenzo from Florence in 1497 that brought to a premature end the master’s great undertaking on the illustration of Dante. After Lorenzo’s return, following on the overthrow and death of Savonarola in 1498, we find no trace of any further relations between him and Botticelli, who by that time would seem to have become a declared devotee of the friar’s memory and an adherent, like his brother, of the defeated side. During these years of swift political and spiritual revolution in Florence, documents give some glimpses of him: in 1497 as painting in the monastery of Monticelli a fresco of St Francis which has perished; in the winter of the same year as bound over to keep the peace with, a neighbour living next to the small suburban villa which Sandro held jointly with his brother Simone in the parish of San Sepolcro; in 1499 as paying belated matriculation fees to the gild of doctors and druggists (of which the painters were a branch); and again in 1499 as carrying out some decorative paintings for a member of the Vespucci family. It has been suggested, probably with reason, that portions of these decorations are to be recognized in two panels of dramatic scenes from Roman history, one illustrating the story of Virginia, which has passed with the collection of Senatore Morelli into the gallery at Bergamo, the other a history of Lucretia formerly belonging to Lord Ashburnham, which passed into Mrs Gardner’s collection at Boston. These and the few works still remaining to be mentioned are all strongly marked by the strained vehemence of design and feeling characteristic of the master’s later years, when he dramatizes his own high-strung emotions in figures flung forward and swaying out of all balance in the vehemence of action, with looks cast agonizingly earthward or heavenward, and gestures of wild yearning or appeal. These characters prevail still more in a small Pietà at the Poldi-Pezzoli gallery, probably a contemporary copy of one which the master is recorded to have painted for the Panciatichi chapel in the church of Sta Maria Maggiore; they are present to a degree even of caricature in the larger and coarser painting of the same subject which bears the master’s name in the Munich gallery, but is probably only a work of his school. The mystic vein of religious and political speculation into which Botticelli had by this time fallen has its finest illustration in the beautiful symbolic “Nativity” which passed in succession from the Aldobrandini, the Ottley, and the Fuller Maitland collections into the National Gallery in 1882, with the apocalyptic inscription in Greek which the master has added to make his meaning clear (No. 1034). In a kindred vein is a much-injured symbolic “Magdalene at the foot of the Cross” in private possession at Lyons. Among extant pictures those which from internal evidence we must put latest in the master’s career are three panels illustrating the story of St Zenobius, of which one is at Dresden and the other two in the collection of Dr Mond in London. The documentary notices of him after 1500 are few. In 1502 he is mentioned in the correspondence of Isabella d’Este, marchioness of Gonzaga, and in a poem by Ugolino Verino. In 1503–1504 he served on the committee of artists appointed to decide where the colossal David of Michelangelo should be placed. In these and the following years we find him paying fees to the company of St Luke, and the next thing recorded of him is his death, followed by his burial in the Ortaccio or garden burial-ground of the Ognissanti, in May 1510.
The strong vein of poetical fantasy and mystical imagination in Botticelli, to which many of his paintings testify, and the capacity for religious conviction and emotional conversion which made of him an ardent, if belated, disciple of Savonarola, coexisted in him, according to all records, with a strong vein of the laughing humour and love of rough practical and verbal jesting which belonged to the Florentine character in his age. His studio in the Via Nuova is said to have been the resort, not only of pupils and assistants, of whom a number seem to have been at all times working for him, but of a company of more or less idle gossips with brains full of rumour and tongues always wagging. Vasari’s account of the straits into which he was led by his absorption in the study of Dante and his adhesion to the sect of Savonarola are evidently much exaggerated, since there is proof that he lived and died, not rich indeed, but possessed of property enough to keep him from any real pinch of distress. The story of his work and life, after having been the subject in recent years of much half-informed study and speculation, has at length been fully elucidated in the work of Mr H. P. Horne cited below,—a masterpiece of documentary research and critical exposition.
Bibliography.—Vasari, Le Opere (ed. Milanesi), vol. iii.; Crowe-Cavalcaselle, Hist. of Painting in Italy, vol. ii.; Fr. Lippmann, Botticellis Zeichnungen zu Dantes Göttlicher Komödie; Dr Karl Woermann, “Sandro Botticelli” (in Dohme, Kunst u. Künstler); Dr Hermann Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli; Dr E. Steinmann, Sandro Botticelli (in Knackfuss series, valuable for the author’s elucidation of the Sixtine frescoes); I. B. Supino, Sandro Botticelli; Bernhard Berenson, The Drawings of Florentine Painters; The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (2nd ed.); The Study and Criticism of Italian Art; papers in the Burlington Magazine, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (to this critic is due the first systematic attempt to discriminate between the original work of Botticelli and that of his various pupils); J. Mesnil, Miscellanea d’Arte and papers in the Rivista d’Arte, &c.; W. Warburg, Sandro Botticelli’s “Geburt der Venus” and “Frühling”; Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady), The Life and Art of Sandro Botticelli (1904); F. Wickhoff in the Jahrbuch der k. Preussischen Kunstsammlungen (1906); Herbert P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli (1908); this last authority practically supersedes all others. (S. C.)
BÖTTIGER, KARL AUGUST (1760–1835), German archaeologist, was born at Reichenbach on the 8th of June 1760. He was educated at the school of Pforta, and the university of Leipzig. After holding minor educational posts, he obtained in 1791, through the influence of Herder, the appointment of rector of the gymnasium at Weimar, where he entered into a circle of literary men, including Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe. He published in 1803 a learned work, Sabina, oder Morgenszenen im Putzzimmer einer reichen Römerin, a description of a wealthy Roman lady’s toilette, and a work on ancient art, Griechische Vasengemälde. At the same time he assisted in editing the Journal des Luxus und der Moden, the Deutsche Merkur, and the London and Paris. In 1804 he was called to Dresden as superintendent of the studies of the court pages, and received the rank of privy councillor. In 1814 he was made director of studies at the court academy, and inspector of the Museum of Antiquities. He died at Dresden on the 17th of November 1835. His chief works are:—Ideen zur Archäologie der Malerei, i. (1811) (no more published); Kunstmythologie (1811); Vorlesungen und Aufsätze zur Alterthumskunde (1817); Amalthea (1821–1825); Ideen zur Kunstmythologie (1826–1836). The Opuscula et Carmina Latina were published separately in 1837; with a collection of his smaller pieces, Kleine Schriften (1837–1838), including a complete list of his works (56 pages). His biography was written by his son Karl Wilhelm Böttiger (1790–1862), for some time professor of history at Erlangen, and author of several valuable histories (History of Germany, History of Saxony, History of Bavaria, Universal History of Biographies).
BOTTLE (Fr. bouteille, from a diminutive of the Lat. butta, a flask; cf. Eng. “butt”), a vessel for containing liquids, generally as opposed to one for drinking from (though this probably is not excluded), and with a narrow neck to facilitate closing and pouring. The first bottles were probably made of the skins of animals. In the Iliad (iii. 247) the attendants are represented as bearing wine for use in a bottle made of goat’s skin. The ancient Egyptians used skins for this purpose, and from the language employed by Herodotus (ii. 121), it appears that a bottle was formed by sewing up the skin and leaving the projection of the leg and foot to serve as a vent, which was hence termed ποδεών. The aperture was closed with a plug or a string. Skin
