Renaissance
Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510)
Italian Early Renaissance painter.
Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) — born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi — was the supreme master of line in Medicean Florence, and the painter who gave the pagan gods of antiquity a new, wistful Christian grace. Trained in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi and influenced by the Pollaiuolo brothers and Andrea del Verrocchio, he built an art in which contour rather than volume carries the meaning: hair, drapery, and limb are drawn with a flowing, melodic line unlike anything else in the Quattrocento.
Under the patronage of the Medici and their circle he produced the great mythological allegories — the Birth of Venus and the Primavera — probably for a Medici villa, images steeped in the Neoplatonic philosophy then fashionable in Florence, where earthly beauty was read as a ladder to the divine. His Madonnas, especially the tondo of the Madonna of the Magnificat, wed the same linear grace to tender devotion. His figures share a gentle melancholy, their beauty touched by transience.
In his last years Botticelli's manner grew more austere and intensely religious. Vasari reports that he became a devoted follower of the fiery preacher Girolamo Savonarola and, in his zeal, gave up painting — a claim modern scholars treat with caution, since documented commissions and the anguished late Mystic Nativity show a changed, urgent spirit rather than silence. He died in relative obscurity, his fame eclipsed until the nineteenth century restored him to the first rank.
The words the record keeps using: graceful, wistful, lyrical, melancholic, elegant, linear, dreamlike.
At a glance
- Lived 1445–1510
- Origin Italian (Florentine)
- Worked in Florence
- Era Renaissance
- Movements Early Renaissance
- Mediums Fresco, Egg tempera on panel
- Techniques Tempera hatching, Linear perspective
Works in the archive
- Primavera (Allegory of Spring), 1480 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
A complex allegory of spring, love, and fertility set in an orange grove, its figures — Venus, the dancing Graces, Mercury, Flora scattering blooms, and the wind Zephyrus seizing the nymph Chloris — read from right to… - Madonna of the Magnificat, 1482 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
A circular panel (tondo) showing the Virgin, crowned by angels, writing the words of the Magnificat — 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' — as the Christ Child guides her hand. One of the most admired and most copied of… - The Birth of Venus, 1485 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
The newborn goddess of love arrives on a scallop shell, blown to shore by the entwined winds while a nymph of the Hours hurries to clothe her — the most famous image of the pagan revival in Renaissance art. Painted in…
What was said
Vasari celebrated Botticelli's drawing and the grace of his figures, singling out the fanciful invention of the mythologies he painted for the Medici, though he faulted the difficulty and strangeness of some of his later, more archaic work.
Vasari reports that Botticelli became an ardent follower ('piagnone') of the reforming friar Girolamo Savonarola and, in his devotion, abandoned painting and fell into hardship — a tradition modern scholars treat cautiously, since documented late commissions show the aging artist continued to work in a changed, more fervently religious spirit.
What would Sandro make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Sandro Botticelli", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Sandro · Keep a life moment the way Sandro would · Pictures made after Sandro