His only large painting with a mythological subject ever to be sold on the open market is the Venus and Mars, bought at Christie's by the National Gallery for a rather modest 1,050 in 1874. He was a great patron of both the visual and literary arts, and encouraged and financed the humanist and Neoplatonist circle from which much of the character of Botticelli's mythological painting seems to come. Vasari saw Botticelli as a firm partisan of the anti-Medici faction influenced by Savonarola, while Vasari himself relied heavily on the patronage of the returned Medicis of his own day. The Medicis propaganda and their political campaign exploiting the figure of the pater patriae Cosimo recruited the best artists and intellectuals the same medal minted by Francesco Rosselli was reproduced on the title page of Marsilio Ficinos Epistolarium. The name Sandro Botticelli conjures visions of beautiful women: The goddess of love emerging from the sea on a giant clam shell in The Birth of Venus (ca. [46], The masterpieces Primavera (c. 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) are not a pair, but are inevitably discussed together; both are in the Uffizi. [134], There has been over a century of speculation that Botticelli may have been homosexual. They also often hung in offices, public buildings, shops and clerical institutions. Portrait of a Lady Known as Smeralda Brandini, 1470s, shown as pregnant. Ed. After all, the 1470s and 1480s were fruitful decades for portraiture in Florence, not only in painting. The Magdalene hugs the cross tightly and we can imagine so did the painter. [9] Giorgio Vasari, in his Life of Botticelli, reported that Botticelli was initially trained as a goldsmith. But when he tried to sell it in 1811, no buyer could be found. [117], Another painting, known as the Mystic Crucifixion (now Fogg Art Museum), clearly relates to the state, and fate, of Florence, shown in the background behind Christ on the Cross, beside which an angel whips a marzocco, the heraldic lion that is a symbol of the city. It is also claimed that the painting was commissioned by Gaspare di Zanobi del Lama for his funerary chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Those decades were also marked by large portraits, a genre that greatly interested the artist. According to Vasari, 147, he was an able pupil, but easily grew restless, and was initially apprenticed as a goldsmith. [5][50], Botticelli painted only a small number of mythological subjects, but these are now probably his best known works. [16], Lippi died in 1469. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance. After Giuliano de' Medici's assassination in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, it was Botticelli who painted the defamatory fresco of the hanged conspirators on a wall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The various museums with versions still support the identification. Landucci even wrote that the most famous doctor in Italy, Lorenzos personal doctor Piero Lioni da Spoleto had thrown himself into a well out of desperation and drowned although someone claimed that he had instead been thrown into the well on purpose as a punishment for failing to save his famous patient. 1480-1485.[88]. [92] Vasari wrote disapprovingly of the first printed Dante in 1481 with engravings by the goldsmith Baccio Baldini, engraved from drawings by Botticelli: "being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante and illustrated the Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstention from work led to serious disorders in his living. In the Mystic Crucifixion (1497-98) now at Harvard the words of Savonarola thunder in the stormy sky, from which lightning and fire are pouring. Instead, the allegorical reinterpretations of the Florentine artist are here for us, to delight us, involve us, and teach us.. In 1621 a picture-buying agent of Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua bought him a painting said to be a Botticelli out of historical interest "as from the hand of an artist by whom Your Highness has nothing, and who was the master of Leonardo da Vinci". Women are normally in profile, full or just a little turned, whereas men are normally a "three-quarters" pose, but never quite seen completely frontally. Unfortunately it is very damaged, such that it may not be by Botticelli, while it is certainly in his style. [90] According to Vasari, he "wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante", which is also referred to dismissively in another story in the Life,[91] but no such text has survived. And where did he go? Possibly they had been introduced by a Vespucci who had tutored Soderini's son. [79], Many portraits exist in several versions, probably most mainly by the workshop; there is often uncertainty in their attribution. Its layout resembles that of the Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder now at the Uffizi. Dempsey; Lightbown, 328329, with a list marking which "are of a certain importance"; Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder, a young woman with Venus and the Three Graces, Portrait of a Lady Known as Smeralda Brandini, Portrait of a young man holding a roundel, Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, "Sandro Botticelli - Biography and Legacy", "Botticelli in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent", "Web Gallery of Art, searchable fine arts image database", "Scenes from The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti - The Collection - Museo Nacional del Prado", Madonna and Child with Angels Carrying Candlesticks, "The Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli", "The Face That Launched A Thousand Prints", "Botticelli Portrait Goes for $92 M., Becoming Second-Most Expensive Old Masters Work Ever Auctioned", "Daniel Sharman and Bradley James Join Netflix's 'Medici' (EXCLUSIVE)", "Predella Panels from the High Altarpiece of SantElisabetta delle Convertite, Florence by Sandro Botticelli (cat. As in other cases, such direct competition "was always an inducement to Botticelli to put out all his powers", and the fresco, now his earliest to survive, is regarded as his finest by Ronald Lightbown. Someone else, probably the order running the church,[30] commissioned Domenico Ghirlandaio to do a facing Saint Jerome; both saints were shown writing in their studies, which are crowded with objects. The painting was included in Botticellis catalog already, attributed with some reservation in 1941 when Sir Thomas Merton bought it from the art dealer Frank Sabin. Early life and career Lightbown, 164168; Dempsey; Ettlingers, 138141, with a later date. Those days, popular imagination thought that the end of the world would come with the end of Lorenzo. When he died in 1510, his remains were placed as he requested. His The Birth of Venus and La Primavera are often said to epitomize for modern viewers the spirit of the Renaissance. Sandro Botticelli was born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi. He devotes a good part of his text to rather alarming anecdotes of practical jokes by Botticelli. [22] This work was painted soon after the Pollaiuolo brothers' much larger altarpiece of the same saint (London, National Gallery). Sandro Botticelli: The series depicts Botticelli as a well-regarded painter patronized by the Medici. After Sixtus was implicated in the Pazzi conspiracy hostilities had escalated into excommunication for Lorenzo and other Florentine officials and a small "Pazzi War". The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into their own. [97], There are hints that Botticelli may have worked on illustrations for printed pamphlets by Savonarola, almost all destroyed after his fall. The frescoes were destroyed after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. A phase of slow personal decline would also begin in 1492, lasting almost twenty years and marked by illness, debts and doubts. His best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in the Uffizi in Florence, which holds many of Botticellis works. He was portrayed by Sebastian de Souza in the second season of the TV series Medici: Masters of Florence. The coats of arms of the Medici and the bride and groom's families appear in the third panel. The first two, and sometimes three, are usually printed on the book page, while the later ones are printed on separate sheets that are pasted into place. Their beauty was characterized by Vasari as exemplifying "grace" and by John Ruskin as possessing linear rhythm. [152], Walter Pater created a literary picture of Botticelli, who was then taken up by the Aesthetic movement. Ettlingers, 164; Clark, 372 note for p. 92 quote. In Western architecture: Early Renaissance in Italy (1401-95) In the Pazzi Chapel (1429-60), constructed in the medieval cloister of Santa Croce at Florence, the plan approaches the central type. )the traditional call to arms against tyrannical government in an attempt to get the mob onside. After Lorenzos death and the expulsion of his son Piero from Florence, the so-called cadetto branch of the Medici family returned to power. [95] This again casts serious doubt on Vasari's assertion, but equally he does not seem to have been in great demand. Lightbown, 242247; Ettlingers, 103105. The frescoes were destroyed after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. [1] Biography [ edit] [127], In 1472, the records of the painter's guild record that Botticelli had only Filippino Lippi as an assistant, though another source records a twenty-eight-year old, who had trained with Neri di Bicci. Despite being commissioned by a money-changer, or perhaps money-lender, not otherwise known as an ally of the Medici, it contains the portraits of Cosimo de Medici, his sons Piero and Giovanni (all these by now dead), and his grandsons Lorenzo and Giuliano. Wikimedia Commons. Botticelli must have had his own workshop by then, and in June of that year he was commissioned a panel of Fortitude (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) to accompany a set of all Seven Virtues commissioned one year earlier from Piero del Pollaiuolo. Botticelli shared the ideas of the Neoplatonic Academy, an institution founded by Cosimo de Medici. It was him who told his younger cousins to purchase it. )[121] More recent scholars are reluctant to assign direct influence, though there is certainly a replacement of elegance and sweetness with forceful austerity in the last period. [123] He continued to live in the family house all his life, also having his studio there. He may have also done a fourth scene on the end wall opposite the altar, now destroyed. Several versions, all perhaps posthumous. Lorenzo De' Medici, portrait by Sandro Botticelli Who were the Pazzi, the historical rivals of the Medici. [148] That mistake is perhaps understandable, as although Leonardo was only some six years younger than Botticelli, his style could seem to a Baroque judge to be a generation more advanced. [39] The subjects and many details to be stressed in their execution were no doubt handed to the artists by the Vatican authorities. The general consensus is that most of the drawings are late; the main scribe can be identified as Niccol Mangona, who worked in Florence between 1482 and 1503, whose work presumably preceded that of Dante. The reference to the Leonardo sketch implies that Botticelli completed the painting after the date Baronelli was hanged. [12] Botticelli both lived and worked in the house (a rather unusual practice) despite his brothers Giovanni and Simone also being resident there. The treason was one of the most serious crimes: convicts were painted hanged by a heel, with the free leg dangling. In 1478 Botticelli had to work on the portraits of the hanged, the killed perpetrators of the Pazzi conspiracy painted on the door of the Dogana of the Palazzo della Signoria. [125], Vasari mentions that Botticelli produced very fine drawings, which were sought out by artists after his death. A few have developed landscape backgrounds. (1) Cosimo in front of the virgin, described by Giorgio Vasari as "the finest of all that are now extant for its life . The artists special taste for portraiture is exhibited in every character: the Magi are depicted as the late Medici family members (Cosimo the Elder, Piero the Gouty and Giovanni), along with the living Lorenzo and Giuliano. The harmony of the composition follows this concern: the subtle drawing modulating the contours of the faces; the lines making the masses lighter; the abolition of tonalcontrast; the almost disinterest in matters of space and perspective. [128] A considerable number of works, especially Madonnas, are attributed to Botticelli's workshop, or the master and his workshop, generally meaning that Botticelli did the underdrawing, while the assistants did the rest, or drawings by him were copied by the workshop.[129]. Opinion remains divided on whether this is evidence of bisexuality or homosexuality. Both probably date from 1490 to 1495. Botticellis St. Sebastian from 1474, commissioned to ward off the plague and modelled on Pollaiolos style almost certainly depicts Giuliano. [83] He also painted portraits in other works, as when he inserted a self-portrait and the Medici into his early Adoration of the Magi. It ended up at auction and was purchased by tycoon Sheldon Solow a few years later. Sandro Botticelli, original name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, (born 1445, Florence [Italy]died May 17, 1510, Florence), one of the greatest painters of the Florentine Renaissance. Lightbown believed that "the division between Botticelli's autograph works and the paintings from his workshop and circle is a fairly sharp one", and that in only one major work on panel "do we find important parts executed by assistants";[131] but others might disagree. [146] Nonetheless, this is the main source of information about his life, even though Vasari twice mixes him up with Francesco Botticini, another Florentine painter of the day. It was a Florentine custom to humiliate traitors in this way, by the so-called "pittura infamante". The Mystical Nativity, Botticelli's only painting to carry an actual date, if one cryptically expressed, comes from late 1500,[109] eighteen months after Savonarola died, and the development of his style can be traced through a number of late works, as discussed below. Vasari's assertion that Botticelli produced nothing after coming under the influence of Savonarola is not accepted by modern art historians. After about 1493 or 1495 Botticelli seems to have painted no more large religious paintings, though production of Madonnas probably continued. The almost nude body is very carefully drawn and anatomically precise, reflecting the young artist's close study of the human body. [28] Another lost work was a tondo of the Madonna ordered by a Florentine banker in Rome to present to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga; this perhaps spread awareness of his work to Rome. [69], Early records mentioned, without describing it, an altarpiece by Botticelli for the Convertite, an institution for ex-prostitutes, and various surviving unprovenanced works were proposed as candidates. Botticellis portraits bring us to the golden age of his life, preluding his dramatic fall into debts and oblivion. Botticelli then appears to have worked on the drawings over a long period, as stylistic development can be seen, and matched to his paintings. Vasari, who lived in Florence from around 1527, says that Botticelli died "ill and decrepit, at the age of seventy-eight", after a period when he was "unable to stand upright and moving around with the help of crutches". Is there a painting of the Pazzi hanging? Ettlingers, 7. pazzi hanging painting 02 Apr. [63] There may have been other panels in the altarpiece, which are now missing. [5][67], Of the two Lamentations, one is in an unusual vertical format, because, like his 1474 Saint Sebastian, it was painted for the side of a pillar in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence; it is now in Milan. ], Pictures with complex compositions followed this portraiture trend too, for example Botticellis Primavera and The Birth of Venus. 1478-1480, 54 x 36 cm, tempera on wood, Giacomo Carrara Academy of Fine Arts, Bergamo, Italy A few years earlier Botticelli portrayed Lorenzo the Magnificent himself, inserting him in the Adoration of the Magi of 1475 now at the Uffizi. The frescoes were destroyed after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. This was probably a votive addition, perhaps requested by the original donor. His date of birth is not certain, but his father, who worked as a tanner, submitted tax returns that claimed Botticelli was two years old in 1447 and 13 years old in 1458. How did the Pazzi die? [145], The English collector William Young Ottley bought Botticelli's The Mystical Nativity in Italy, bringing it to London in 1799. Before was the triumph of his new style; after was the painful downturn that would leave him forgotten by his contemporaries. When interest in Botticelli revived in the 19th century, it was initially largely in his Madonnas, which then began to be forged on a considerable scale. Ettlingers, 199; Lightbown, 53 on the Pisa work, which does not survive. [55] In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where Michelangelo's David would be placed. This can be connected more directly to the convulsions of the expulsion of the Medici, Savonarola's brief supremacy, and the French invasion. [89] He is attributed with an imagined portrait. Here too there is a tondo in the hands of a young man: a reproduction of the commemorative medal of Cosimo the Elder, minted in bronze between 1465 and 1469 whose copies are still visible today at the Bargello Museum in Florence. In his Florentine Diary, the chronicler Luca Landucci reported images worthy of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. For other uses, see. Botticelli has been compared to the Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli, some ten years older, whose later work also veers away from the imminent High Renaissance style, instead choosing to "move into a distinctly Gothic idiom". [52], A series of panels in the form of an spalliera or cassone were commissioned from Botticelli by Antonio Pucci in 1483 on the occasion of the marriage of his son Giannozzo with Lucrezia Bini. Coordinates: 43464.82N 111546.76E. Lightbown, 46 (quoted); Ettlingers, 1922, Lightbown, 6569; Vasari, 150152; Hartt, 324325, Lightbown, 77 (different translation to same effect), Shearman, 3842, 47; Lightbown, 9092; Hartt, 326. [5] For much of this period Lippi was based in Prato, a few miles west of Florence, frescoing the apse of what is now Prato Cathedral. He had perhaps been away from July 1481 to, at the latest, May 1482. [75], Botticelli's Madonna and Child with Angels Carrying Candlesticks (1485/1490) was destroyed during World War II. Botticelli was a man of humble origins, the son of a penniless leather tanner. A Painting By Botticelli (Sandro Botticelli) " Annunciation Cestello "is the Italian art of the XV century, the Renaissance. She holds the baby Jesus, and is surrounded by wingless angels impossible to distinguish from fashionably-dressed Florentine youths. [20], Botticelli's earliest surviving altarpiece is a large sacra conversazione of about 147072, now in the Uffizi. The Vespucci were Medici allies and eventually regular patrons of Botticelli. It is possible that he was at least platonically in love with Simonetta, given his request to have himself buried at the foot of her tomb in the Ognissanti the church of the Vespucci in Florence, although this was also Botticelli's church, where he had been baptized. However, although both artists had a strong impact on the young Botticelli's development, the young artist's presence in their workshops cannot be definitively proven. The open window and mourning dove were familiar symbols of death, alluding to the flight of the soul and the deceased's passage to the afterlife. Backgrounds may be plain, or show an open window, usually with nothing but sky visible through it. [10], The Ognissanti neighbourhood was "a modest one, inhabited by weavers and other workmen,"[11] but there were some rich families, most notably the Rucellai, a wealthy clan of bankers and wool-merchants. Other names occur in the record, but only Lippi became a well-known master. (I, Sailko / CC BY-SA 3.0 ) Pazzi Origins and the Pazzi Conspiracy Culmination . Other sources give 1446, 1447 or 144445. . These characteristics were typical of Florentine portraits at the beginning of his career, but old-fashioned by his last years. She was known as the greatest beauty of her age in Italy, and was allegedly the model for many paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, and other Florentine painters. This may be partly because of the time he devoted to the drawings for the manuscript Dante. [78] These figures represent a secular link to his Madonnas. Recognizable faces in non-portraiture pictures were fairly common at the time. By the 1490s his style became more personal and to some extent mannered. The Pazzi are bankers, rivals to the Medici, one of the big political families waiting in the wings for their opportunity to loosen the Medici's iron grip on the city. Lightbown, 5865, believes it is Giuliano, and the Washington version probably pre-dates his death; the Ettlingers, 168, are sceptical it is Giuliano at all. [96], Once again, the project was never completed, even at the drawing stage, but some of the early cantos appear to have been at least drawn but are now missing. [87], Portrait of a young man holding a roundel c.14801485, Portrait of a Young Man c. [157], The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, 1490, This article is about the Italian Renaissance painter. The size of this artwork 150*156 cm, technique tempera on wood. There are also portraits of the donor and, in the view of most, Botticelli himself, standing at the front on the right. [106], According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the deeply moralistic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in 1498:[107], Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola's, and this was why he gave up painting and then fell into considerable distress as he had no other source of income. An enthroned Madonna and (rather large) Child sit on an elaborately-carved raised stone bench in a garden, with plants and flowers behind them closing off all but small patches of sky, to give a version of the hortus conclusus or closed garden, a very traditional setting for the Virgin Mary. Vasari's Life is relatively short and, especially in the first edition of 1550, rather disapproving. His fortune as a painter was inextricably linked to the de Medici family: patrons, collectors, clients of his most sophisticated works, often sending commissions from other friendly families. Shearman, 47; Hartt, 326; Martines, Chapter 10 for the hostilities. Lightbown suggests that this shows Botticelli thought "the example of Jerome and Augustine likely to be thrown away on the Umiliati as he knew them". Botticellis friendship with power was gone and so was that cultural climate that had informed so many of his works. Various payments up to September are recorded, but no work survives, and it seems that whatever Botticelli started was not finished. Botticelli was best known for such idealized depictions of women, yet the Renaissance painter's practice was hardly limited to these lush . Botticellis painting changed when these political and philosophical scenarios changed too. The delicate winter landscape, referring to the saint's feast-day in January, is inspired by contemporary Early Netherlandish painting, widely-appreciated in Florentine circles. The four predella scenes, showing the life of Mary Magdalen, then taken as a reformed prostitute herself, are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[70]. By then he was aged sixty or more, in this period definitely into old age. [33] These works were called Temptation of Moses, Temptation of Christ, and Conturbation of the Laws of Moses. He holds a medallion of a saint, probably Saint Peter or Saint John: an original insert, perhaps a fourteenth-century work by the painter Bartolomeo Bulgarini. Hartt, 335336; Davies, 105106; Ettlingers, 1314, Lightbown, 248253; Dempsey; Ettlingers, 96103. It is a colored drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm, dating from the 1480's and is part of the collection of the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. The painting has an undertone of twentieth-century magic realism la Antonio Donghi, the most Renaissance of Italian painters of the last century. A few years earlier Botticelli portrayed Lorenzo the Magnificent himself, inserting him in the Adoration of the Magi of 1475 now at the Uffizi. Three vestments survive with embroidered designs by him, and he developed a new technique for decorating banners for religious and secular processions, apparently in some kind of appliqu technique (called commesso). At the time, he was increasingly showing indifference, if not impatience for religious subjects. This manuscript has 93 surviving pages (32 x 47cm), now divided between the Vatican Library (8 sheets) and Berlin (83), and represents the bulk of Botticelli's surviving drawings. The figure of Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa was removed in 1479, after protests from the Pope, and the rest were destroyed after the expulsion of the Medici and return of the Pazzi family in 1494. The fourth, Pallas and the Centaur is clearly connected with the Medici by the symbol on Pallas' dress. Many exist in several versions of varying quality, often with the elements other than the Virgin and Child different. [66], In contrast, the Cestello Annunciation (148990, Uffizi) forms a natural grouping with other late paintings, especially two of the Lamentation of Christ that share its sombre background colouring, and the rather exaggerated expressiveness of the bending poses of the figures. Lorenzo il Magnifico became the head of the family in 1469, just around the time Botticelli started his own workshop. He said that just before Lorenzos death a comet had appeared in the sky and wolves had been heard howling; in the church of Santa Maria Novella, an enraged woman had started shouting that an ox with horns of fire was setting the whole city ablaze; lions had been seen fighting among themselves in the streets of Florence; finally, lightning struck against the lantern of the dome of Santa Reparata, causing large stones to roll in the direction of the Medici house. Some art historians have taken issue with these attributions, which the Victorian critic John Ruskin has been blamed for promulgating. In the late 1450s, Botticelli entered into Filippo Lippis workshop, and Lippis style is seen in many of Botticellis paintings, especially his earliest works. The first monograph on the artist was published in 1893, the same year as Aby Warburg's seminal dissertation on the mythologies; then, between 1900 and 1920 more books were written on Botticelli than on any other painter. 3; Dempsey; Hartt, 329334. [43], The Punishment of the Sons of Corah contains what was for Botticelli an unusually close, if not exact, copy of a classical work. Botticelli's attempt to design the illustrations for a printed book was unprecedented for a leading painter, and though it seems to have been something of a flop, this was a role for artists that had an important future. References to the Medici in Botticellis works were almost obligatory in the 1470s and 1480s. Nevertheless, that Botticelli was approached from outside Florence demonstrates a growing reputation. Some may be connected with the work in other media that we know Botticelli did. These episodes give the sense of panic felt by an entire city.