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Alessandro
di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro
Botticelli or Il Botticello ("The Little Barrel";
March 1, 1445 – May 17, 1510) was an Italian
painter of the Florentine school during the Early
Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years
later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo
de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as
a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough,
he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli.
His posthumous reputation suffered until the late
19th century; since then his work has been seen to
represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting,
and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among
the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art.
Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know
that he became an apprentice when he was about fourteen
years old, which would indicate that he received a
fuller education than did other Renaissance artists.
Vasari reported that he was initially trained as a
goldsmith by his brother Antonio. Probably by 1462
he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi; many of his
early works have been attributed to the elder master,
and attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced
also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting,
it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate
and detailed manner. As recently discovered, during
this time, Botticelli could have traveled to Hungary,
participating in the creation of a fresco in Esztergom,
ordered in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by Vitéz
János, then archbishop of Hungary.
By 1470 Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this
early date his work was characterized by a conception
of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with
clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of
light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled
forms.
Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know
that he became an apprentice when he was about fourteen
years old, which would indicate that he received a
fuller education than did other Renaissance artists.
Vasari reported that he was initially trained as a
goldsmith by his brother Antonio. Probably by 1462
he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi; many of his
early works have been attributed to the elder master,
and attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced
also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting,
it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate
and detailed manner. As recently discovered, during
this time, Botticelli could have traveled to Hungary,
participating in the creation of a fresco in Esztergom,
ordered in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by Vitéz
János, then archbishop of Hungary.
By 1470 Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this
early date his work was characterized by a conception
of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with
clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of
light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled
forms.
Botticelli was already little employed in 1502; after
his death his reputation was eclipsed longer and more
thoroughly than that of any other major European artist.
His paintings remained in the churches and villas
for which they had been created, his frescoes in the
Sistine Chapel upstaged by Michelangelo's. The first
nineteenth century art historian to have looked with
satisfaction at Botticelli's Sistine frescoes was
Alexis-François Rio. Through Rio, Anna Brownell
Jameson and Charles Eastlake were alerted to Botticelli,
but, while works by his hand began to appear in German
collections, both the Nazarene movement and the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood ignored him. Walter Pater created a literary
picture of Botticelli, who was then taken up by the
Aesthetic movement. The first monograph on the artist
was published in 1893; then, between 1900 and 1920
more books were written on Botticelli than any other
painter.
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Sandro Botticelli - The Primavera
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