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Jan 25, 2021 · Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, ca. 1485.Gallerie degli Uffizi. Mythological Scenes. During the 1480s and ’90s, as Renaissance artists grew in prominence, Botticelli produced two of his most ...
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Sandro Botticelli is one of the greatest painters of the Florentine Renaissance. His Birth of Venus (completed c. 1485) and La Primavera (painted c. 1477–82) are often said to epitomize for modern viewers the spirit of the Renaissance, though his elongated, seemingly weightless figures and fairly flat spaces deviate from the naturalism of other Renaissance painters.
What was Sandro Botticelli’s family like?
Sandro Botticelli was born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi to a father who was a tanner. Sandro had an elder brother, Giovanni, a pawnbroker who was called Botticello (“Little Barrel”), from which Sandro’s nickname was derived. Sandro never married, and he lived with his family throughout his life.
How was Sandro Botticelli educated?
Sandro Botticelli’s father apprenticed him to a goldsmith after his schooling was finished. But, since Sandro preferred painting, his father placed him under Filippo Lippi, who was one of the most admired Florentine masters. By 1470 Botticelli had established himself in Florence as an independent master with his own workshop.
How did Sandro Botticelli die?
Botticelli’s name is derived from that of his elder brother Giovanni, a pawnbroker who was called Botticello (“Little Barrel”). As is often the case with Renaissance artists, most of the modern information about Botticelli’s life and character derives from Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, & Architects, as supplemented and corrected from documents. Botticelli’s father was a tanner who apprenticed Sandro to a goldsmith after his schooling was finished. But, since Sandro preferred painting, his father then placed him under Filippo Lippi, who was one of the most admired Florentine masters.
Lippi’s painterly style, which was formed in the early Florentine Renaissance, was fundamental to Botticelli’s own artistic formation, and his influence is evident even in his pupil’s late works. Lippi taught Botticelli the techniques of panel painting and fresco and gave him an assured control of linear perspective. Stylistically, Botticelli acquired from Lippi a repertory of types and compositions, a certain graceful fancifulness in costuming, a linear sense of form, and a partiality to certain paler hues that is still visible even after Botticelli had developed his own strong and resonant colour schemes.
After Lippi left Florence for Spoleto, Botticelli worked to improve the comparatively soft, frail figural style he had learned from his teacher. To this end he studied the sculptural style of Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painters of the 1460s, and under their influence Botticelli produced figures of sculptural roundness and strength. He also replaced Lippi’s delicate approach with a robust and vigorous naturalism, shaped always by conceptions of ideal beauty. Already by 1470 Botticelli was established in Florence as an independent master with his own workshop. Absorbed in his art, he never married, and he lived with his family.
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These transitions in Botticelli’s style can be seen in the small panels of Judith (The Return of Judith) and Holofernes (The Discovery of the Body of Holofernes), both c. 1470, and in his first dated work, Fortitude (1470), which was painted for the hall of the Tribunale dell’Are della Mercanzia, or merchants’ tribunal, in Florence. Botticelli’s art from that time shows a use of ochre in the shadowed areas of flesh tones that gives a brown warmth very different from Lippi’s pallor. The forms in his paintings are defined with a line that is at once incisive and flowing, and there is a growing ability to suggest the character and even the mood of the figures by action, pose, and facial expression.
Botticelli worked in all the current genres of Florentine art. He painted altarpieces in fresco and on panel, tondi (round paintings), small panel pictures, and small devotional triptychs. His altarpieces include narrow vertical panels such as the St. Sebastian (1474); small oblong panels such as the famous Adoration of the Magi (c. 1476) from the Church of Santa Maria Novella; medium-sized altarpieces, of which the finest is the beautiful Bardi Altarpiece (1484–85); and large-scale works such as the St. Barnabas Altarpiece (c. 1488) and the Coronation of the Virgin (c. 1490). His early mastery of fresco is clearly visible in his St. Augustine (1480) in the Church of Ognissanti, in which the saint’s cogent energy and vigour express both intellectual power and spiritual devotion. Three of Botticelli’s finest religious frescoes (completed 1482) were part of the decorations of the Sistine Chapel undertaken by a team of Florentine and Umbrian artists who had been summoned to Rome in July 1481. The theological themes of the frescoes were chosen to illustrate papal supremacy over the church; Botticelli’s are remarkable for their brilliant fusion of sequences of symbolic episodes into unitary compositions.
Florentine tondi were often large, richly framed paintings, and Botticelli produced major works in this format, beginning with the Adoration of the Kings (c. 1473; also called Adoration of the Magi), that he painted for Antonio Pucci. Before Botticelli, tondi had been conceived essentially as oblong scenes, but Botticelli suppressed all superfluity of detail in them and became adept at harmonizing his figures with the circular form. His complete mastery of the tondo format is evident in two of his most beautiful paintings, The Madonna of the Magnificat (1482) and The Madonna of the Pomegranate (c. 1487). Botticelli also painted a few small oblong Madonnas, notably the Madonna of the Book (c. 1480), but he mostly left the painting of Madonnas and other devotional subjects to his workshop, which produced them in great numbers. In his art the Virgin Mary is always a tall, queenly figure wearing the conventional red robe and blue cloak, but enriched in his autograph works by sensitively rendered accessories. She often has an inner pensiveness of expression, the same inwardness of mood that is communicated by Botticelli’s saints.
Venus, who appears in many of Botticelli's most famous paintings of the period, was an important figure for the Neoplatonists, representing humanitas - the development of human virtue, in all its forms. A shift was happening across science, culture and philosophy, and Botticelli's paintings gave form to this new vision, heralding the emergence of a modern world.
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Detail from Botticelli's most famous work, [4] The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486) Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445 [1] – May 17, 1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli (/ ˌ b ɒ t ɪ ˈ tʃ ɛ l i / BOT-ih-CHEL-ee; Italian: [ˈsandro bottiˈtʃɛlli]) or simply Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance.
Feb 25, 2022 · Florence artist Sandro Botticelli, painter, and draftsman, was one of Italy’s most celebrated painters of the time. His beautiful Madonna and child paintings, altarpieces, and life-size mythological works, such as Venus and Mars, were hugely famous during his lifetime. Here are a few select examples of his artworks.
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Oct 6, 2021 · Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) was a prominent Italian painter of the Quattrocento or Early Renaissance. Roughly seven years older than Leonardo da Vinci, he was one of the first artists of this era to depict humanist subject matter, such as scenes from classical mythology. Additionally, his many influential patrons, including members of ...
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Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli is credited for his contributions to the Italian Renaissance. Widely considered one of the most prolific painters of the 15th century, he is known for his large-scale paintings of mythological subject matter, including Primavera, an allegorical celebration of spring. This piece is one of the most important ...
