SANDRO BOTTICELLI |

Pallade e il Centauro |

Uffizi, Sala 10-14 |

Versione integrale | La narrazione è di Sofia Kossiwa Sessou, la voce di Lella Costa |

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Sandro Botticelli | Pallas and the Centaur | Room 10-14 

My feet were swinging over the emptiness from the peak where I was sitting, when I heard a rumble from the other side of the hill. The noise became ever more intense when, out of a cloud of dust, I saw the disconnected gallop of a Centaur. He began to skirt the stone wall, but finding no way out, he stopped. The striking of his hooves marked the passage of time towards something inexorable. He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, forcing me to do the same.

Then I saw her, moving forward slowly, like a cat about to pounce. The wind was creating small silky whirlpools on her clothes. But it was her eyes, pale grey and magnetic, that conveyed her true fascination. Just a few steps from the Centaur, she extended her fingers towards his head, but he withdrew. “Why do you move away, Centaur? Do I disgust you? Or do you fear me?”

“How could you ever disgust me, oh Pallas Athena?” he answered. “I am afraid not of you, but for my freedom. I love to live by my instinct and please my senses beyond all limits, but cannot do so if I am not free of you. So why do you persecute me?”

Athena answered: “There was once a Greek philosopher, Plato was his name. I will now tell you the story he told the world. After death, the soul has a moment of reminiscence in which it appears as a chariot, pulled by two horses – the black one lustful and moving downwards, the white one spiritual and moving upwards – and driven by a charioteer. Mine is not a persecution, Centaur. What you call freedom is the submission of your spirituality to passions. If you accept my guidance, I will be the charioteer who takes you to greatness”. The Centaur silently bowed his head. The goddess took his hair, harnessing it in a soft, yet firm grip, and led him out from the shadow, towards the horizon. 

I climbed down the peak and ran, reached the narrow streets of Florence, pushed the door into my master’s workshop and called out loudly: “Mastro Botticelli!” At the end of my story he did not say a word, but raised the white cloth covering a mysterious canvas before which he was sitting, revealing Pallas in the act of seizing the Centaur’s hair. “How is that possible?” I asked, shocked. Botticelli said: “When Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned a painting to convey the political image of his family, I found myself wandering on that peak, in search of inspiration. The vision of Athena’s triumph over the Centaur answered my doubts: she was the clearest example of a power that brought order back to the Centaur’s soul, just as the Medici brought peace to Florence”.

He suddenly stopped and smiled at me. “What could be so important as to afflict your young mind, to bother that poor Centaur and the divine Athena?” Ignoring his condescending tone, I said: “Sir, for years I have been dragging a ‘beast’ inside me, which nourishes my creativity. I could not be without it: it is my instinctive and emotional soul. But it is out of control. Athena honoured me with her presence, perhaps, because of what I aspire to become: a woman who lives her passions, but is not overwhelmed by them”.

At the end of my passionate monologue, Botticelli looked at me with a touch of melancholy: probably, he knew something about it too.