By Gretchen Kita

Born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi in Florence in 1445, Botticelli was apprenticed to a goldsmith. Later he was a pupil of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi. He spent all his life in Florence except for a visit to Rome in 1481-82. There he painted wall frescoes in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican. His name, “Botticelli” is derived from his elder brother Giovanni, a pawnbroker, who was called Il Botticello ("The Little Barrel"). 

In his time spent in Rome, Sandro painted the following subjects: Christ tempted by the devil; Moses slaying the Egyptian and receiving drink from the daughter of Jethro the Midianite; the sacrifice of the sons of Aaron and the fire from heaven which consumed them, with some of the canonized popes in the niches above.  By these he won yet greater renown among many rivals who were working with him, Florentines and natives of other cities, and he received a goodly sum of money from the Pope. 

Botticelli was an innovator. He painted the first large-scale non-religious mythological subjects since ancient classical times. (The Primavera and the Birth of Venus are best known - both are found in the Uffizi). These two paintings show how in his earlier days Botticelli tried to synchronize neo-Platonism with Christianity - the avowed aim of the philosophers in the Medici Academy.

In Florence, Botticelli was a protégé of several members of the powerful Medici family. He painted portraits of the family and many religious pictures, including the famous The Adoration of the Magi. The picture was commissioned by Guasparre di Zanobi del Lama for the Epiphany's chapel he made build in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella. This sacred scene is today very important because many figures portray features of members of the Medici family: Cosimo the Elder as the old king in front of the Child, his son Piero, called the Gouty, as the kneeling king with red mantle in the center, Lorenzo the Magnificent as the young man at his right, in profile, with a black and red mantle. The figure looking out at the spectator is probably the self-portrait of Botticelli.

Later he was strongly influenced by the preaching of Savonarola and his final paintings show a new seriousness and intensity of feeling when dealing with Christian themes. Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity in the London National Gallery illustrates this well.

Although he was one of the most individual painters of the Italian Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli remained little known for centuries after his death. Then his work was rediscovered late in the 19th century by a group of artists in England known as the Pre-Raphaelites.

Saint Leo University, Copyright 2000