61
«¡Ay, qué hoyo! En este hoyo han de tropezar cuantos ojos le miraren... ¿Ese llama vuestra merced hoyo, señora mía? Pues yo sé poco de hoyos, o ése no es hoyo, sino sepultura de deseos vivos». La Git., p. 26. Cf. this with the detail of the Birth of Venus that prominently shows a cleft chin.
62
«a la edad en que has nacido»... «¿cómo nació tal belleza?» La Gitanilla, p. 22.
63
«Desparecíla día de la Ascensión del Señor, a las ocho de la mañana, del año mil y quinientos y noventa y cinco». La gitanilla, pp. 115-16. It would be difficult, at this point, to surmise exactly what Cervantes had in mind when he specified the time of the day and the year.
64
The significance of Preciosa's dancing before the statue of St. Anne requires comment. Since her cult arose in Europe towards 1485 -exactly when Botticelli was executing his mythologies- as a reaction to the growing spiritual crises caused by humanism, her mention by Cervantes becomes a point of interest. With Preciosa dancing in the Church of Holy Mary, and before the image of St. Anne, the scene becomes immensely symbolic not only of the invasion of the realm of the Virgin by the spirit of humanism, but also of the triumph of humanitas over the reactionary forces (the cult of St. Anne) set in motion to destroy it. On the rise of the worship of St. Anne as a reaction to humanism, see A. Chastel, Art et humanisme, p. 343.
65
Besides the studies on Botticelli which I cite in this article, other important works are: A. Warburg, Sandro Botticellis 'Geburt der Venus' and 'Frühling,'(Leipzig, 1893), included in Gesammelte Schriften, I, (Leipzig, 1932); Adolfo Venturi, Botticelli, Rome, 1925; R. Van Marle, Italian Schools of Painting, XII, The Hague, 1931; a good recent bibliography in Roberto Salvini, All the Paintings of Botticelli, New York, 1965.
66
Wilhelm Bode, Sandro Botticelli, (New York, 1925), p. 55.
67
«non mai altra pittura si potrebbe porre piu di questa a simbolo del rinascimento». La pittura toscana del Quattrocento, (Novara, 1945), p. xxvi.
68
I have borrowed these quotations from Gombrich's article (pp. 11-12). Though he gives the titles and dates of publication of his sources, he does not provide page references.
69
«Botticellis Primavera», Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, XXXI (1908); quoted by Gombrich, p. 12.
70
Emil Jacobsen, «Allegoria della Primavera di Sandro Botticelli», Archivo Storico dell'Arte, III (1897), p. 328.