A New Look at the Rediscovery of Botticelli in the Nineteenth Century

The Case of Vernon Lee

Abstract

The rediscovery of artists from the early modern period in nineteenth-century Europe was a formative phenomenon in the development of the discipline of art history and had a significant influence on the visibility of contemporary cultural processes. One of the outstanding examples of this phenomenon is the rediscovery of the Italian painter Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) in Britain in the second half of the century. This article examines the response to this phenomenon and especially that of the British author and art critic Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856– 1935). Her essay on Botticelli, which was published in 1882 in the Cornhill Magazine, followed the transfer of Botticelli’s frescoes to the Louvre Museum. I argue that Lee’s response reveals her recognition of Botticelli, whose art was undergoing a process of rediscovery, as symbolic capital, bearing the weight of nineteenth-century Britain’s new cultural baggage. In order to achieve this, Botticelli’s art had been disconnected from its natural source in fifteenth-century Italy, where it was created. While on the one hand, Lee identifies and criticizes the phenomenon of rediscovery, on the other, she exploits the discourse around Botticelli, whose reputation had received a boost as a result of this same process.