Art Gallery

Botticelli, Sandro (1445 Florence - 1510 Florence), Italian painter, one of the leading painters of the Florentine renaissance Botticelli developed a highly personal style characterized by elegant execution, a sense of melancholy, and a strong emphasis on line; details appear as sumptuous still lifes. Botticelli was born in Florence as Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi. His nickname was derived from Botticello ("little barrel"). After an apprenticeship as a goldsmith, which was to influence his entire work, he became the pupil of Filippo Lippi from whom he took over the Madonna and angel figures, but giving them more expression. There is no proof that he worked under Verrocchio, though this is probable for stylistic reasons. There he would have perfected his talent as master of the sensitively drawn line. His early work takes up the plastic realism of the past generation: the "Adoration of the Magi" (Florence, Uffizi, c. 1475) is characteristic with its clear composition, three-dimensional figures, strong bright colours and individual treatment of the faces (Medici portraits). Botticelli spent almost all of his life working for the great families of Florence, especially the Medici family. His painting Adoration of the Magi (1476-1477, Uffizi, Florence, Italy) contains likenesses of the Medicis. 

Later, the interest in space and physical from diminishes in favor of the richly moving line of the slender figures and fine detail of jewels and richly embroidered dress ("Birth of Venus", "Primavera". In 1481 Botticelli was one of several artists chosen to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. There he painted The Youth of Moses, the Punishment of the Sons of Corah, and the Temptation of Christ.

But as his three frescos begun in 1481 on the lower wall of the Sixtine Chapel shows, Botticelli was well able to achieve monumental effects. He soon became a master of the large format: in his "Cleansing Sacrifice of the Lepers" the center emerges naturally, the multi-figured groups connect, giving unity to the scene, and foreground, middle ground and background merge into each other. In his late work the line gains in sensitivity (92 silver point drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy) and in emotional expressiveness ("Annunciation"" , Florence, Uffizi, 1490-1495). The religious fervour depicted in these later works may have been the result of Savonarola's sermons calling for repentance, but this tendency was already noticeable in his mature work.

Botticelli also painted religious subjects, especially panels of the Madonna, such as Madonna of the Magnificat (1480s), Madonna of the Pomegranate (1480s), and Coronation of the Virgin (1490), all in the Uffizi. With his death in 1510 the 15th-century period of Italian painting came to a close