【单选题】

The history of responses to the work of the artist SandroBotticelli (1444-1510) suggests gests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease withBotticelli’s work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamedBotticelli in favor of his fellow Florentine, Michelangelo.Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors,Botticelli’s work remained out side of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes. )

The primary reason forBotticelli’s unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the mid-nineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because his work, for the most part, did not Seem to these observers to exhibit the traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example,Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro.
Another reason forBotticelli’s unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries.Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art.
In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship ofBotticelli’s work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his reputation began to grow.Analyses and assessments ofBotticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, as well as by the’ writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis ofBotticelli’s personality), inspired a new appreciation ofBotticelli throughout theEnglish-speaking worlD、YetBotticelli’s work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines-features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued thatBotticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves-rather, that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central.Because of Home’s emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciateBotticelli’s achievements.
We can learn from the text that art critics have a history of ______.A．suppressing painters’ art initiatives
B．favoring aBotticelli’s best paintings
C．rejecting traditional art characteristics
D．undervaluingBotticelli’s achievements