美国国家公共电台 NPR A Lesser-Known Venus Visits The U.S. In New Botticelli Exhibit

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The famous Renaissance¹ painting "Birth Of Venus" has truly proven itself to be timeless. The image of the nude² goddess on a clamshell has been appropriated and satirized⁴ countless⁵ times since the original was painted 500 years ago. The artist was Sandro Botticelli. Now a major traveling exhibition tells the artist's story. It's a collaboration⁶ between the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Va., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Andrea Shea of member station WBUR reports the show features a number of works rarely seen outside Italy.

ANDREA SHEA, BYLINE⁷: Botticelli's best-known work, that image of Venus on a giant clamshell, has been riffed on by everyone from Andy Warhol to Lady Gaga to "The Simpsons."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SIMPSONS")

HARRY⁸ SHEARER⁹: (As Lenny Leonard) Homer, what's the matter?

HANK AZARIA: (As Carl Carlson) Ain't you'd ever seen a naked chick riding a clam³ before?

DAVID MIRKIN: You steal from the masters. I'm not going to pretend that we did anything less than that.

SHEA: David Mirkin produced that episode of "The Simpsons." "The Last Temptation Of Homer" has the character fantasizing about his ideal woman, and his imagination goes to Botticelli's "Venus."

MIRKIN: Her hair's blowing in the wind. It's exactly the way you would set up a film shot of a gorgeous woman.

SHEA: Mirkin pokes¹⁰ fun at the iconic image but says he truly loves it.

MIRKIN: I think it's incredibly effective in terms of what it's actually trying to do. Its sensuality is amazing. I don't know where he came up with the idea of her riding on a clam. I mean, that's the funniest part (laughter).

SHEA: Few people know much about Boticelli, say the curators of the new exhibition. They're trying to change that with help from another "Venus" that's a focal point of the show.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: OK.

SHEA: Two handlers in white gloves carefully hang the life-size painting.

FREDERICK ILCHMAN: Bellissima, bravo, looks great.

SHEA: That's Museum of Fine Arts curator Frederick Ilchman.

ILCHMAN: She sums up so much about Boticelli's attitude, his yearning¹² to express ideals of beauty in human form.

SHEA: The exhibition is called "Botticelli And The Search For The Divine." The artist painted this solitary¹³ Venus in the 1480s after the more famous "Birth Of Venus." She's similar in pose, but her torso's strong contours and pale skin are covered with a sheer top. Her hair is red and tightly braided, not blown by the breath of angels, making her more Earthly than godlike.

ILCHMAN: It's not just he's doing a kind of new subject matter, the life-size human nude, but that he's painting it with a new level of subtlety¹⁴.

SHEA: Ilchman says this "Venus" helps us understand Botticelli's quest for divine beauty. He walks to another of the two dozen paintings in the exhibition, one that shows the influence of the Renaissance and its search for knowledge, a portrait of the Virgin¹⁵ Mary and Christ child reading a book.

ILCHMAN: In the second half of the 15th century in Florence, there was a new appreciation¹⁶ of ancient art. That is, Greek and Roman statues. And what I think is so remarkable¹⁷ is just how consistent his ideal of female beauty is.

SHEA: Botticelli's pursuit of realistic-looking divine beauty came to a halt after France invaded Florence. A Dominican friar named Savonarola took over the city. Muscarelle Museum of Art chief curator John Spike¹⁸ conceived of this exhibition and says Savonarola's followers¹⁹ collected and burned books and paintings deemed indecent in the 1497 Bonfires of the Vanities.

JOHN SPIKE: We know that Boticelli was considered the best painter of beautiful nude women in the city of Florence. So everyone supposes that his works were burned in this way.

SHEA: Somehow, the "Venuses" survived, but the deeply pious²⁰ Botticelli believed Savonarola's teachings and the artist was traumatized when the fanatic²¹ himself was burned on a pyre. Boticelli became reclusive, inward, more devout²².

SPIKE: His last works become neo-medieval, flat, no details, no attempt to represent the human figure under the drapery.

SHEA: The mood becomes somber²³. The warmer colors disappear. And, says the MFA's Frederick Ilchman, the eyes of the figures don't make contact with the viewer.

ILCHMAN: The sort of come hither or the welcome you see with the "Venus," these later paintings by Botticelli seem to be more hermetically sealed. They're not expressive²⁴ in the same way but full of powerful emotion.

SHEA: When the exhibition debuted²⁵ in Virginia, John Spike says two people fainted.

SPIKE: Great works of art yearn¹¹ to be understood. There's a wonderful word for yearning in Italian - it's bramare - yearn to be understood, and we the spectators yearn to understand.

SHEA: And if visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston yearn to understand more, they can buy one of the exhibition's thick catalogues in the gift shop or maybe a pair of "Venus" socks. For NPR News, I'm Andrea Shea in Boston.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOSTER THE PEOPLE SONG, "DON'T STOP")