Biography of Sandro Botticelli


Sandro Botticelli is a Florentine Renaissance painter, whose real name was Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi.

In his biography, Botticelli studied with Fra Filippo Lippi, whose exquisite color scheme manifested in the artist’s early works. This trend can be seen on the canvases “Adoration of the Kings”, “Chigi Madonna”.

Elements of the stronger style of Pollajolo, Verrocchio soon began to appear in such works of Botticelli: “Fortitude”, “St. Augustine”, “Portrait of a Young Man”. Botticelli was one of the greatest colorists of Florence, master of rhythmic lines. Soon the artist became the favorite of the Medici.

In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV asked Botticelli to help in the design of the Sistine Chapel. Then Sandro Botticelli performed three biblical murals. After that, he returned to Florence, where the peak of his popularity was observed.

Then Botticelli succumbed to the ideas of Ficino and Poliziano. His mythological allegories of “Spring, Birth of Venus, Mars and Venus”, “Pallas Subduing a Centaur” are mentioned mainly as the triumph of love over brutal instincts. Probably, in the 1490s the artist worked on dreamy illustrations for “Divine Comedy”. He painted several frescoes for Villa Tornabuoni in the Louvre, created a series of light-radiating Madonna. According to descriptions of those times, Botticelli restored the famous antique work “The Calumny”.

The religious position in the biography of Botticelli is clearly expressed in his works “Nativity”, “Last Communion of St. Jerome”, “Pieta”.


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Biography of Sandro Botticelli