Dedication : to Alessandro Filipepi, called ‘the Botticelli’

The XIV International Biennial of Lace at Sansepolcro in 2010 will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Alessandro Filipepi, known as BOTTICELLI (Florence 1445-1510), the renowned Florentine painter, world famous for his paintings above all for Spring (c.1478) and for The Birth of Venus (c. 1485), masterpieces both of which can be admired in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

As told by Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo 1511-Florence 1574) in The Lives having a father who realised his artistic predisposition, as well as sending him to school “to read, to write and to count” he placed him in a workshop of a goldsmith, “his godfather, known as Botticello, at that time a very competent master of that art.” “Falling in love with painting”, Alessandro was left in the didactic care of “fra’ Filippo del Carmine, an excellent painter” quickly reaching a standard which no one would have ever thought.” And until this point it is historically recorded: however it is not commonly known that he was also a most elegant designer of fabrics and embroidery, like other artists of the liberal arts and the Italian Renaissance, more or less famous, such as  Jacopo Cambi and Geri di Lapo the first, Parri Spinello and sister,  Jacopo da Montagnana, Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Antonio and Piero Pollaiolo, Giovanni da Udine, Perin del Vaga, Raffaellin del Garbo, Francesco Ubertini detto Bachiacca, etc. and so forth.

Cennino Cennini in his book Il Libro dell’Arte, Trattato della pittura, written at the end of the 14th century dedicating chapter CLXIV to “How one must design in cloth or in sendal for the service of embroiderers” confirms the traditional custom of collaboration between the two arts, as yet not subdivided into the major or minor categories.

The involvement of Botticelli in the textile arts is documented by Vasari in the work quoted above, when he affirms “he was among the first who worked standards and other draperies”, for example in the technique called “di commesso”, that is the application realized by the cutting the elements of the design in taffeta or in polychrome velvet, placed on joined cloths and fixed with a whipped stitch or other. He adds that “with his hands the baldachin of Or S.Michele was made” , also, “all of his own design” produced the embroidery “of the ornamentation of the cross that the friars carried in procession from S.Maria Novella”, of which unfortunately not a trace remains. Finally there were many artists who asked him for graphic designs: the traditional textile story, in fact, has it that the presence of his hand can be seen even in some lampas and brocatelle, better known as “figured borders”, produced at Florence on elaborate looms, representing scenes from the gospels, such as the Annunciation, the birth of Christ, the Resurrection etc. Amongst the works which can be assigned with certainty to his talent one recalls: the representations on the ornamental crosses on the back of the chasubles of the Collegiata di Pietrasanta and the Brukenthal Museum of Sibiu, on the dalmatic at the cathedral museum of Orvieto, the altar cloth in the cathedral museum of Siena, on the hooded copes in the museum Poldi Pezzoli and the Castello Sforzeso, Milan. One deals with exciting products (notwithstanding the conservative vicissitudes which had at times compromised their physical state and notwithstanding inappropriate restoration) since they are evidence of the practical implementation of the marriage between art and craft, emitting a rare enchantment. Thus the dedication to Botticelli by the XIV International Lace Biennial of Sansepolcro is very appropriate because it introduces a subject which is very much at the heart of both the President of the Centro Culturale and to its scientific committee, sensitive enough to the past but always looking to the present, reflections on what one understands by art and how more or less distant from craftwork.