BOTTICELLI, SANDRO, properly ALESSANDRO DI MARI ANO DEI FILIPEPI (1444-1510), Florentine painter, was born at Florence in 1444, in a house in the Via Nuova, Borg' Ognissanti. This was the home of his father, Mariano di Vanni dei Filipepi, a struggling tanner. Sandro, the youngest child but one of his parents, derived the name Botticelli, by which he was commonly known, not, as related by Vasari, from a goldsmith to whom he was apprenticed, but from his eldest brother Giovanni, a pros perous broker, who seems to have taken charge of the boy, and who for some reason bore the nickname Botticello or Little Barrel. A return made in 1457 by his father describes Sandro as aged thirteen, weak in health, and still at school (if the words sta al legare are to be taken as a misspelling of sta al leggere, otherwise they might perhaps mean that he was apprenticed either to a jeweller or a bookbinder). Having shown an irrepressible bent towards painting, he was apprenticed in 1458-59 to Fra Filippo Lippi, in whose workshop he remained as an assistant apparently until 1467.
Some authorities hold that he must have attended for a while the much-frequented workshop of Verrocchio. But the "Forti tude" is the only authenticated early picture in which the Verrocchio influence may perhaps be traced. Like other artists of his time in Florence, Botticelli had begun to profit by the patronage of the Medici family. For the house of Lorenzo it Magnifico in the Via Larga he painted a decorative piece of Pallas with lance and shield. This is probably the fine picture of "Pallas and the Cen taur," rediscovered after remaining for many years in the private apartments of the Pitti Palace and now in the Uffizi. But Sandro's more especial patron was another Lorenzo, the son of Pierfrancesco de Medici. For the villa of this younger Lorenzo at Castello Botti celli painted about 1477-78 the famous picture of "Primavera" or Spring now in the Uffizi at Florence. The design was inspired by Poliziano's poem the "Giostra" with reminiscences of Lucretius and of Horace (perhaps also, as has lately been suggested, of the Late Latin "Mythologikon" of Fulgentius). Venus, fancifully draped, with Cupid hovering above her, stands in a grove of orange and myrtle and welcomes the approach of spring who enters heralded by Mercury, with Flora and Zephyrus gently urging her on. In 1480 he painted in rivalry with Ghirlandaio a grand figure of St. Augustine on the choir screen of the Ognissanti, afterwards removed to another part of the church. About the same time we find clear evidence of his contributing designs to the workshops of the "fine-manner" engravers in the shape of a beau tiful print of the triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne adapted from an antique sarcophagus (the only example known is in the British Museum) as well as in nineteen small cuts executed for the edition of Dante with the commentary of Landino printed at Florence in 1481 by Lorenzo della Magna.
At this time Botticelli was called to Rome to take part with other leading artists of the time (Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino and Pinturicchio) in the decoration of Sixtus IV.'s chapel at the Vatican, the ceiling of which was afterwards destined to be the field of Michelangelo's noblest labours. During the time of his stay in Rome (1481-82) Botticelli is recorded also to have painted another "Adoration of the Magi," his fifth or sixth em bodiment of the same subject. Returning to Florence towards the end of 1482 Botticelli worked there for the next ten years until the death of Lorenzo I1 Magnifico in 1492. To 1482-83 belongs the fine altar-piece of San Barnabo (a Madonna and Child with six saints and four angels), now in the Uffizi. Very nearly of the same time must be the most popular and most often copied, though very far from the best-preserved of his works, the round picture of the Madonna with singing angels in the Uffizi, known from the text written in the open choir-book as the "Mag nificat." Somewhere near this must be placed the beautiful and highly-finished drawing of "Abundance" which has passed into the British Museum, as well as a small Madonna in the Poldi-Pezzoli collection at Milan, and the fine full-faced portrait of a young man, probably some pupil or apprentice in the studio, at the National Gallery. His superb altar-piece of the Madonna between the two saints John, now in the Berlin gallery, was painted for the Bardi chapel in the church of San Spirito in 1486. In the same year he helped to celebrate the marriage of Lorenzo Torna buoni with Giovanna degli Albizzi by an exquisite pair of symbol ical frescoes, the remains of which, after they had been brought to light from under a coat of whitewash on the walls of the Villa Lemmi, were removed in 1882 to the Louvre. Within a few years of the same date (1485-88) should apparently be placed that second masterpiece of fanciful classicism done for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's villa at Castello, the "Birth of Venus," now in the Uffizi, the design of which seems to have been chiefly inspired by the "Stanze" of Poliziano, perhaps also by the "Pervigilium Veneris" ; together with the scarcely less admirable "Mars and Venus" of the National Gallery, and the most beautiful and char acteristic of all his Madonnas the roundel of the "Virgin with the Pomegranate" (Uffizi). "The Annunciation" from the convent of Cestello now in the Uffizi, shows a design adapted from Donatello. The great altar-piece in the Uffizi with its predelle commissioned by the Arte della Seta in 1488 and finished in 1490 with the in comparable ring of dancing and quiring angels encircling the Virgin in the upper sky, is the last of his large altar-pieces.
Chiefly between the years of 1492 and 1495, the master under took a set of drawings in illustration of Dante on a far more elaborate and ambitious plan than the little designs for the en graver which had been interrupted in 1481. Eighty-five of these drawings are in the famous manuscript acquired for the Berlin museum at the sale of the Hamilton Palace collection in 1882, and eleven more in the Vatican library at Rome. The series is one of the most interesting that has been preserved by any ancient master ; it reveals an intimate knowledge of and profound sym pathy with the text, full of Botticelli's characteristic poetic yearn ing and vehemence of expression, his half-childish intensity of vision; exquisite in lightness of touch and in swaying, rhythmical grace of linear composition and design. Most of the drawings remain in pen outline only, over a light preliminary sketch with the lead stylus ; all were probably intended to be finished in colour, as a few actually are. To the period of these drawings would seem to belong the famous "Calumny of Apelles" at the Uffizi, inspired no doubt by some contemporary translation of the text by Lucian, and equally remarkable by a certain feverish energy in its sen timent and composition, and by its exquisite finish and richness of execution and detail.
Simone di Mariano, a brother of Botticelli long resident at Naples, returned to Florence in 1493 and shared Sandro's home in the Via Nuova. He soon became a devoted follower of Savona rola, and has left a manuscript chronicle which is one of the best sources for the history of the friar and of his movement. Sandro himself seems to have remained aloof from the movement almost until the date of the execution of Savonarola and his two fol lowers in 1498. At least there is clear evidence of his being in the confidence and employ of Lorenzo di Pierf rancesco so late as 1496 and 1497, which he could not possibly have been had he then been an avowed member of the party of the Piagnoni. After Lor enzo's return, following on the overthrow and death of Savonarola in 1498, we find no trace of any further relations between him and Botticelli, who by that time would seem to have become a declared devotee of the friar's memory.
The mystic vein of religious and political speculation into which Botticelli had by this time fallen has its finest illustration in the beautiful symbolic "Nativity," which passed in succession from the Aldobrandini, the Ottley, and the Fuller Maitland collections into the National Gallery in 1882 with the apocalyptic inscription in Greek which the master has added to make his meaning clear. In a kindred vein is a much-injured symbolic "Magdalene at the foot of the Cross" in private possession at Lyons. Other extant pictures by the master are four panels illustrating the story of St. Zenobius, of which one is at Dresden, two are in the National Gal lery, London, one is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the fourth is in the collection of Lord Lee of Fareham. In Botticelli served on the committee of artists appointed to decide where the colossal David of Michelangelo should be placed. In these and the following years we find him paying fees to the corn pany of St. Luke, and the next thing recorded of him is his death, followed by his burial in the Ortaccio or garden burial-ground of the Ognissanti in May 151o. The story of his work and life is fully elucidated in the work of Mr. H. P. Horne—a masterpiece of documentary research and critical exposition.