Thursday 25 June 2009

Botticelli

A masterpiece, of course; and bouncy-bouncy springy. But looking again, I'm struck by how rubbish Botticelli was at painting anything other than solids. Fluids and gases evade his brush's representational capacity: the waves on that ocean (click on the image for a closer look; or better still, go here) are so feebly schematic they almost couldn't be worse; and the Zephyr flying in from the left looks as if he is not so much blowing as spitting at the newborn goddess.

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