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Biography

Botticelli was Florentine and extremely successful at the peak of his career, with a highly individual and graceful style founded on the rhythmic capabilities of outline. With the emergence of the High Renaissance style at the turn of the 16th century, he fell out of fashion, died in obscurity and was only returned to his position as one of the best-loved quattrocento painters through the interest of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.

His nickname "Botticelli" means "little barrel" and was originally bestowed on his older brother. For some reason the name was passed on to, and adopted by, the younger painter brother. "Botticelli's early years are obscure, but he seems to have been trained in the studio of Filippo Lippi whose style informs his earliest dated work, the Fortitude panel (1470, Florence, Uffizi). This was commissioned to be one of a series of seven, the others having been executed by Piero Pollaiuolo. A stylistic affinity here also with Pollaiuolo is perhaps due to the patrons' requirements for unity within the series (certainly it is never evident again). Many of Botticelli's paintings are undated, but an Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uffizi) has been dated by modern scholarship to c1475. This is important because it provides evidence of Botticelli having already secured the patronage of the Medici whose portraits (according to Vasari) appear in the picture. (continued on the bottom)

IMAGES ARE COMPRESSED FOR FASTER LOADING

Fortitude	Lamentation Over The Dead Christ	Madonna And Child With Angel	Madonna With A Child	Pallas And The Centaur
The Annunciation	The Birth of Venus	The Cestello Annunciation	The Return Of Judith To Bethulia	Venus And Mars

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So well did this work establish Botticelli's reputation that in 1481-82 he was commissioned to join Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli (the most celebrated painters of the day) to paint frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli's two most famous paintings were painted around this time, possibly for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. They are the Primavera (c1478) and the Birth of Venus (c1483), both in the Uffizi.

These are mythologies, not of the capricious Ovidian sort, but, it has been suggested, ones that embody the moral and metaphysical Neoplatonic ideas that were then fashionable in the Medici circles. Pure visual poetry, they are stylistically the quintessence of Botticelli: there is a deliberate denial of rational spatial construction and no attempt to model solid-looking figures; instead the figures float on the forward plane of the picture against a decorative landscape backdrop, and form, defined by outline, is willfully modified to imbue that outline with expressive power.

His workshop in these years was highly successful, one of its most lucrative lines being panels depicting the Madonna and Child, perhaps the most beautiful of which is the tondo of the Madonna of the Magnificat (c1485, Florence, Uffizi). Like his master Lippi, before him, Botticelli has created his own instantly recognizable type of feminine beauty, used for Madonnas and Venuses alike. His most remarkable painting is also the only one that is signed, the Mystic Nativity (1500, London, National Gallery).

It is deliberately archaic with hieratic differences in scale (the Virgin and Child dwarfing the other figures) and carries a cryptic inscription (partly erased) forecasting the end of the present troubled world and the beginning of a new order. Many of his works datable to this period seem to be imbued with the same spiritual tension (which some scholars have attributed to Botticelli's association with the hellfire preacher Savonarola, although such an association has not been substantiated).

During his last decade his style must have appeared absolutely out of date and he seems to have done very little work. Without doubt the High Renaissance style obscured his achievement and, despite his earlier success, he had no followers of any merit. His most important pupil was the son of his own master, Filippino Lippi.

After Leonardo's return to the city in 1500, however, Botticelli's linear style must have looked archaic and he died in obscurity. His fame was not resurrected until the second half of the 19th century, when the Pre-Raphaelites imitated his wan, elongated types, Ruskin sang his praises, and Walter Pater dedicated to his art one of his most eloquent essays. At the end of the century his work was a major influence on Art Nouveau.

Sandro Botticelli in Museums and Web Sites (Click on link view image)

Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
The Resurrected Christ

Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK
Virgin and Child

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
St Jerome, 1498-1505
St Dominic, 1498-1505

Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna
Madonna with Child and Two Angels, ca.1490

Louvre Museum, Paris
Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman, ca.1483-85

Sandro Botticelli in the Louvre Museum Database, Paris (only available in French)

Sandro Botticelli at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius, 1500-10

Sandro Botticelli at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, 1490s

Sandro Botticelli at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Annunciation, ca.1485

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
Adoration of the Christ Child, ca.1500

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston   
Paintings collection online

National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

Sandro Botticelli at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
8 works by Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli at the National Gallery, London, UK

Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick
The Resurrection

Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick - Provenance Research
Christ Bearing The Cross, ca.1490-1510
The Resurrection, ca.1490-1510

Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
Judith with the Head of Holofernes, ca.1469-70

Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Virgin and Child with the Young John the Baptist

Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina
The Nativity, 1475-80

Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
5 works by or related to the artist

Hyde Collection Art Museum, Glens Falls, New York
Annunciation, 1490s

Joconde Database of French Museum Collections (in French)  

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, France (in French)  

Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, France
The Virgin with Child Supported by an Angel under a Garland

Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, Italy
The Virgin and the Child
The Dead Christ Mourned

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Palazzo Ruspoli, Rome (in Italian)  

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan (in Italian)  
Madonna del padiglione

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
The Annunciation, 1490

Samuel H. Kress Foundation Collection
The Adoration of the Child, ca.1500

Samuel H. Kress Foundation Collection
Giuliano de' Medici, ca.1478

The Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, UK
The Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist

Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue, London, UK
Portrait of a Lady, known as Smeralda Bandinelli, 1470s

Beloit College Department of Classics
Venus and Mars, 1483

Jacques-Edouard Berger Foundation
Analysis of The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli in the Art Renewal Center

Artchive

Artcyclopedia
Masterscan feature: Portrait of a Young Woman

Artonline

CGFA

insecula·com

The Athenaeum
2 works online by Botticelli

Web Gallery of Art

WebMuseum

Wikimedia Commons Image Database

1200 Years of Italian Sculpture (mostly in Italian)  
In-depth analysis of La Primavera

Artyzm

Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur (in German)  

California State University WorldImages Database

Ciudad de la Pintura (in Spanish)   

El Poder de la Palabra (The Power of the Word) (in Spanish)  

Humanities Web

Olga's Gallery

University of Leipzig, Germany