Botticelli, Sandro (1445–1510)

The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1476) by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, depicting the arrival of the three kings at Christ's birthplace.

Florentine painter. He depicted religious and mythological subjects. He was patronized by the ruling Medici family and was deeply influenced by their neo-Platonic circle. It was for the Medicis that he painted Primavera (1478) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1482–84). From the 1490s he was influenced by the religious fanatic Savonarola, and developed a harshly expressive and emotional style, as seen in his Mystic Nativity (1500).

His work for the Medicis was designed to cater to the educated classical tastes of the day. As well as his sentimental and beautiful young Madonnas, he produced a series of inventive compositions, including tondi (circular paintings) and illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy. He broke with the Medicis after their execution of Savonarola.

His real name was Alessandro di Mariano dei Filipepi. The name Botticelli (‘little barrel’) probably derived from ‘Botticello’, the nickname of his elder brother Giovanni, who seems to have taken charge of the boy. From the goldsmith's shop of his brother Antonio he seems to have gone to the studio of Fra Filippo Lippi, whom he imitated in his early work. He had his own studio when little over 20 and profited by the study of other masters, Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo especially, as may be seen in his Fortitude (1470) and Judith (about 1472).

In 1475 he entered the service of the Medicis, and his art shows the effect of the humanism and classical culture of this environment. His Adoration of the Magi (about 1477) contains a number of Medicean portraits (as well as his own), and he painted his famous allegory, Primavera, representing the seasons, for Lorenzo, son of Pierfrancesco de' Medici.

The years 1481–82 were spent in Rome, where he worked with other artists on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, to which he contributed frescoes of the Life of Moses, the Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and the Temptation of Christ by Satan. Prolific years followed in Florence, both religious and pagan subjects occupying him, including his Madonna of the Magnificat (about 1485), Pallas and the Centaur, and the famous Birth of Venus.

A change is perceptible in his work from about 1490, reflecting a religious disquiet almost certainly produced or intensified by the influence of the religious reformer Savonarola. He seems to have consigned a number of his pagan subjects to the reformer's bonfire, and the triumph of religious enthusiasm over the sensuousness of the Renaissance can subsequently be traced in his work. He made his series of illustrations for Dante's Inferno between 1492 and 1497, The Calumny of Apelles (1495) being his last secular masterpiece. The year 1498, in which Savonarola was put to death, saw the production of his passionate Pietà, and in the great Nativity of 1500 he returned to the medieval spirit and conception. His last works express melancholy and suffering with dramatic intensity, as in the Crucifixion and the four scenes from the life of St Zenobius.

In composition and detail he shows an unrivalled poetic invention. The delicacy of his art (which imitators at various periods have vainly tried to recapture) is accompanied by a dynamic linear energy and dramatic power.