Uffizi, restoration of Botticelli's St. Ambrose Altarpiece reveals all the doubts and uncertainties about the young painter

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence today presented the results of the restoration on the Saint Ambrose Altarpiece, a masterpiece by Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445 - 1510, his first major commission as well as the first known altarpiece of his production. It was made around 1470 by the then 25-year-old artist: the restoration has brought to light all the doubts and uncertainties of the young painter in the realization of the work. In particular, the artist continued to rework the work even until the most advanced stages of its realization, with interventions in some cases still visible to the naked eye today. These include characters changing positions, an entire portion of the floor replaced by the platform on which the throne of the Virgin, the work’s protagonist, rests, fingers disappearing, and even eyes that, on the contrary, appear in places where they should not be, evidently signaling changes in the characters’ positions and posture.

These are just some of the elements that show the young Sandro Botticelli’s intense creative torment during the making of the altarpiece, depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints. The discoveries on the panel were made following the intervention carried out by theOpificio delle Pietre Dure, where the panel had been under restoration since 2018. An important intervention, followed by several professionals: the superintendent of the Opificio Marco Ciatti, the scholar and restorer Cecilia Frosinini who was entrusted with the historical-artistic direction, the restorers Luisa Gusmeroli and Patrizia Riitano (for the pictorial part), Ciro Castelli and Andrea Santacesaria (for the support), and finally Roberto Bellucci who was in charge of the optical investigations, photographic documentation and graphic elaborations. All in collaboration with CNR INO, INFN, Florence section, Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering, Department of Physics, University of Cagliari.

Subjected to an extensive diagnostic campaign, the work revealed a surprising number of substantial rethinks, both in the planning phase of the drawing and in the pictorial drafting: the latter is a very unusual fact for the period. Most of these changes emerged thanks to the comparison of radiography and reflectographic investigations: it was thus possible to visualize how Botticelli had, for example, literally obliterated a floor already structured through engravings and painted in detail, in order to replace its central part with a platform to raise the figure of the Madonna. But that’s not all: the Child, in the arms of the Virgin, drastically changed position during the painting process, as is visible thanks to the identification in reflectography, of the first setting of the eyes, placed in a different position and rotated from the final one, and a leg that changes posture. St. Cosmas, one of the saints depicted (together with St. Damian he is the patron saint of the Medici: probably the commissioning of the altarpiece was from the Medici sphere), originally looked upward, as is again evident from the displacement of the eye, differently oriented originally, which re-emerges ’from the bowels’ of the painting sifted again by reflectography. With further reconsideration, Botticelli later decided to give this character a different kind of attitude and thus, in the finished version, Saint Cosmas, instead of facing the Virgin, holds his head lower and looks toward the viewer.

Finally, there are changes so late that they were made during the completion stage of the painting, and therefore impossible to disguise completely: they are those that are visible today even to the naked eye. And it is again Saint Cosmas who did not convince the doubting Botticelli: his robe, in the earlier version, placed him shifted backward, toward the left, and the halo of his different placement, not entirely erased, is still visible today to the attentive observer. Even more macroscopic, then, are the interventions on Saint Catherine of Alexandria, depicted standing at the far right of the altarpiece: in this case Botticelli literally erases one of her thumbs by making it disappear under a flap of her mantle but, as with Saint Cosmas’s robe, the earlier ’version’ of the finger can still be seen today. The same, albeit slightly less recognizably, happens with the tip of the little finger of the same hand, which the Florentine painter decided to ’shorten’ when the painting was almost finished. Finally, the most curious element: a pair of eyes, engraved on the panel, identified at mid-height of the figure of St. Catherine, in the central area of her robe. It is not known why this pair of eyes is found in that position: one hypothesis is that Botticelli may have initially imagined the saint in a kneeling position, but reconsidered almost immediately and decided instead to depict her standing. The eyes could thus be immediate evidence of this initial, later abandoned, approach. Proving this, there is also the perfect superimposibility between the pupils engraved under the robe with those painted on St. Catherine’s face in the final version, verified concretely on the work by the Opificio specialists themselves.

The altarpiece, which starting in the next few days will return to permanent display in the Spring Room at the Uffizi, had been at the restoration agency’s headquarters for several months. It had problems with the wooden support and three areas where the color was lifted and partially damaged. The intervention, also supported financially by the Friends of the Uffizi, solved the tension problems in the support and remedied the color changes.

"After the revelations that emerged with the spectacular restoration of Leonardo’sAdoration of the Magi and the investigations into the artist’s 8P drawing, after the discoveries made on Artemisia Gentileschi’s St. Catherine, and much more," said Uffizi Director Eike D. Schmidt, “the Opificio delle Pietre dure offers us another example of the very high levels reached by scientific research on works of art. Even the most famous ones, about which it seems we now know everything, can instead offer us previously unsuspected information, even on artists studied for centuries such as Botticelli. This should teach us that good restoration should also be an opportunity for research and not aim only for spectacular effects. For this I am grateful to the Friends of the Uffizi and the Friends of the Uffizi Galleries, who always generously support us in our efforts to protect and better understand our heritage.”

“It is likely that this unusual characteristic methodology of Botticelli’s, marked by a continuous rethinking in the genesis of the work, comes to him from his apprenticeship at the workshop of Filippo Lippi, who already before him manifested this tendency, absolutely unusual for artists of the time,” explains Cecilia Frosinini. “And it is also important to note, how some of the new details that have emerged from the investigations, related to the making of the Saint Ambrose Altarpiece, could offer elements for an overall re-examination of the commissioning of the work.”

“By far the most important result obtained from this campaign of analysis, as should always be the case with restorations,” Marco Ciatti notes instead, “has been the expansion of knowledge about Botticelli’s modus operandi, which will now have to be adequately reconnected to other works by the same artist.”

“We owe the support for this important restoration to the generosity of our friend Joseph Raskauskas, a member of the American Friends of the Uffizi Galleries, which we founded in 2006,” stresses Maria Vittoria Rimbotti, president of the Amici degli Uffizi and Friends of the Uffizi Galleries, the associations that supported the intervention. “And it is always a great pleasure for us to see the passion with which the Friends are committed to protecting the masterpieces of culture, thus recognizing our common roots.”

Pictured: Sandro Botticelli, Altarpiece of Saint Ambrose after restoration (c. 1467-1470; tempera on panel, 170 x 194 cm; Florence, Uffizi Gallery)

Uffizi, restoration of Botticelli's St. Ambrose Altarpiece reveals all the doubts and uncertainties about the young painter

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