Sandro botticelli biography timeline info

Intriguingly, the painting also contains a self-portrait of Botticelli - the only one known to be in existence. The artist stands on the right edge of the painting and looks directly out at the viewer. Although he was probably only around 30 years old when this was painted, Botticelli depicts himself as confident and masterful, and his confidence is justified by the accomplished style of this work, which compares to some of his more mature masterpieces.

One of the most famous paintings in Western art, the Primavera depicts a series of figures from classical mythology in a garden or woodland. Rather than representing a scene from a specific story, it is believed that Botticelli either presents the figures in this arrangement purely for aesthetic reasons, or if there was a narrative, it is unknown to us today.

Either way, the mysteriousness of the painting is part of its great appeal. It is generally agreed that the painting is an allegory about the season of Spring, as suggested by its title, but there is no agreement as to the exact message being conveyed. It is likely that the central character is Venus, the goddess of love, while the three graces dance beside her, and Chloris, the goddess of flowers, is chased by the figure of the West Wind before transforming into Flora, echoing a myth described in Ovid.

The messenger god Mercury stands to the left, as the figure of Cupid floats above the scene, about to fire an arrow. The Primavera is particularly significant as it is one of the earliest examples in Western post-Classical painting of a non-religious scene. As The Guardian's senior art critic Jonathan Jones puts it, "Botticelli's Primavera was one of the first large-scale European paintings to tell a story that was not Christian, replacing the agony of Easter with a pagan rite.

The very idea of art as a pleasure, and not a sermon, began in this meadow. In this panel painting, Botticelli turns once again to a mythological subject. Venus, the goddess of love, reclines on the grass while her lover Mars, the god of war, lies asleep and disarmed before her, presumably tired out by love-making. Several young fauns are playing in the scene, attempting to wake Mars by blowing in his ear with a conch shell.

The painting also features some wasps "vespe" in Italian , which may be a reference to the Vespucci family, who lived near to Botticelli, or may refer to the stings of love. The basic message of the work could be read as "love conquers war". The painting, which was probably intended to be incorporated into a piece of bedroom furniture, is essentially a joke at the expense of men.

Mars is undone by his sexual encounter, disarmed and vulnerable, while Venus looks calmly on, fully clothed and awake. Mars is wearing only a small swathe of fabric, leaving his almost-bare body on view to both his lover Venus and, implicitly, the viewer, becoming the object of desire in the painting. Though Venus is fully clothed having "conquered" Mars, the portrayal of her powerful sexuality is equally as enticing.

As art historian Patricia Rubin points out, "Botticelli's Venus, posed with her exhausted lover Mars, is, by definition, the pagan adulteress. The emphatically sensuous curves and sculptural surfaces of her body signify her physical desirability and use tactics studied from ancient sculpture. Dante, the most famous of Italian poets, wrote his Divine Comedy between c.

A century and a half later, it was widely read and its importance was recognized. In the s, Botticelli began working on a series of drawings to illustrate the poem, 92 of which survive, including the Map of Hell. This is a detailed depiction of Dante's nine circles of hell, the types of people sent to each, and the punishments inflicted there.

It is one of four fully-colored images in the collection; the rest are mostly in silverpoint or worked over in ink. The work was conceived to have a different image depicting the entire sequence of events for each canto of the Divine Comedy , of which there are 99 in all. This was an unprecedented way of approaching illustrations to a text.

Usually, an artist would choose a particular scene or episode, whereas Botticelli captures the entire canto, sometimes repeating key figures in different formulations to express the narrative's progress. This approach can be seen in the Map of Hell , which ambitiously attempts to capture the entire configuration of the underworld. Art historian Barbara Watts argues that the illustrations are often overlooked in Botticelli's oeuvre, claiming that "Botticelli's Dante drawings are of such vision and beauty that, no less than the Primavera , they are central to his artistic achievement.

Silverpoint and ink with colored tempera on goatskin parchment - Vatican City. This painting is one of the best-loved works of art in the world. Although Botticelli lost favor after his death, his reputation was revived in the late 19th century and since then The Birth of Venus has risen to international fame. The painting depicts the goddess of love, Venus, sailing to shore from the sea on a giant shell.

She is blown into land by Zephyr, the god of the west wind, while a female attendant waits with a cloak. Like the slightly earlier Primavera , The Birth of Venus is groundbreaking for presenting a non-religious scene from classical mythology on such a large scale. Moreover, the inclusion of such a prominent female nude at near-life-size was virtually unprecedented in Western painting.

The work plays an obvious homage to classical art, emulating the "Venus Pudica" style of a nude female figure attempting, but not quite succeeding, to preserve her modesty with her hands and in this case her erotically charged long hair. Botticelli's reference to classical sculpture in Venus' pose is overt, as she stands in the contrapposto stance with her weight on one foot, which was favored by Greco-Roman art and emulated by early Italian Renaissance artists.

Intriguingly, the stance is so exaggerated that it is anatomically impossible, and the figure stands improbably on the edge of the floating shell. In this way, Botticelli also refers back to the Gothic tradition that preceded the Renaissance, where emphasis was placed on symbolism and status rather than on realistic depiction. It is interesting, therefore, that Botticelli's most famous work has come to stand for Italian Renaissance art in the popular imagination, even though it eschews many of the key tenets of the later movement in favor of aesthetic beauty and an overall idea.

This unusual late scene by Botticelli has an almost surrealistic quality to it, with its ornate setting, blank skies and allegorical figures. The work is the result of Botticelli's attempt to recreate a lost painting by the Ancient Greek artist Apelles, as described in a well-known text by the Roman writer Lucian, pointing to Botticelli's admiration of classical art.

The scene is an allegory depicting slander, with all the figures representing vices or virtues, apart from the King and the accused man, who could be seen as representing the balance of power. A figure closely resembling the nude central character of The Birth of Venus c. Once again, she stands in an exaggerated contrapposto stance, with one hand recalling the "Venus Pudica" trope and one pointing towards heaven.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into their own. Walter Pater created a literary picture of Botticelli, who was then taken up by the Aesthetic movement. The first monograph on the artist was published in , the same year as Aby Warburg 's seminal dissertation on the mythologies; then, between and more books were written on Botticelli than on any other painter.

Botticelli appears as a character, sometimes a main one, in numerous fictional depictions of 15th-century Florence in various media. The main belt asteroid Botticelli discovered on 9 February , is named after him. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects.

Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Italian Renaissance painter — For other uses, see Botticelli disambiguation. Probable self-portrait of Botticelli, in his Adoration of the Magi Florence , Republic of Florence now Italy. Early life [ edit ]. Career before Rome [ edit ]. Key early paintings [ edit ]. Sacra conversazione altarpiece, c.

Sebastian , Madonna with Lilies and Eight Angels , c. Fresco Saint Augustine , Ognissanti, Sistine Chapel [ edit ]. Mythological subjects of the s [ edit ]. Religious paintings after Rome [ edit ]. Bardi Altarpiece [ edit ]. San Barnaba Altarpiece [ edit ]. Other works [ edit ]. Cestello Annunciation , c. Lamentation over the Dead Christ , c.

Pala delle Convertite , c. Madonnas, and tondos [ edit ]. Portraits [ edit ]. Young Man, Pitti Palace , perhaps Portrait of a Lady Known as Smeralda Brandini , s, shown as pregnant. Giuliano de' Medici , who was assassinated in the Pazzi conspiracy. Several versions , all perhaps posthumous. Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel c.

Portrait of a Young Man c. Portrait of a young woman , possibly Simonetta Vespucci , La Bella Simonetta , also said to be of Simonetta Vespucci , c. Dante Alighieri , c. Dante, printing and manuscripts [ edit ].

Sandro botticelli biography timeline info

The Medici [ edit ]. Last years [ edit ]. Other media [ edit ]. Workshop [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Finances [ edit ]. Sexuality [ edit ]. Later reputation [ edit ]. Annunciation , c. The Outcast Despair , c. Mystic Crucifixion , Fogg Art Museum. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. Other sources give , or — Italian paintings of the fifteenth century.

Washington: National Gallery of Art. ISBN OCLC According to Vasari, , he was an able pupil, but easily grew restless, and was initially apprenticed as a goldsmith. How to Define Authorship in a Renaissance Workshop". Lightbown Sandro Botticelli: Life and work. University of California Press. Archived from the original on August 19, Retrieved December 12, During the colouring Botticelli strengthened many of the contours by means of a pointed instrument, probably to give them the bold clarity so characteristic of his linear style.

Archived from the original on August 7, Retrieved December 7, Retrieved January 8, According to Leonardo, Botticelli anticipated the method of some 18th century watercolourists by claiming that a landscape could be begun by throwing a sponge loaded with paint at the panel. This appears to exclude the idealized females, and certainly the portraits included in larger works.

Virtual Uffizi Gallery. Archived from the original on March 29, Retrieved March 29, Botticelli's aquiline version influenced many later depictions. The History of Art in 50 Paintings. Delphi Classics. Archived from the original on July 6, Retrieved July 4, The various museums with versions still support the identification. Lightbown connects it more specifically to Savonarola than the Ettlingers.

Fine Art Touch. Archived from the original on November 9, Retrieved August 10, Random House. Archived from the original on December 7, In , Botticelli was invited to Rome to take part in the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Sandro joined artists such as Perugino, Ghirlandaio and then Michelangelo in contributing to the most well known piece of Italian art.

While there, Botticelli worked on several pieces in the Chapel. In all, Botticelli painted three large pieces, as well as seven papal portraits in the Sistine Chapel. As Sandro grew older, his style underwent a remarkable change. Sandro became a follower of the monk Savonarola who was a prominent civic leader in Florence. He stressed giving up all worldly things.

Many followers fled the city, but Botticelli stayed and continued to paint. Many of his works contained a very religious feel to them. Sandro included highly religious symbolism in his paintings; they seemed to be telling a story. He is known to be one of the earliest artists of the Renaissance. Details and records of his life are vague and yet to be uncovered, but he was known to be an art apprentice at the age of fourteen, also giving an impression that he was able to undertake a more comprehensive art education that the rest of the Renaissance painters and sculptors.

Botticelli is also said to be trained as a goldsmith by his older brother, Antonio. By , he became an apprentice to an artist named Fra Filippo Lippi, whose early artworks were credited due to his supervision. Due to the large influence a painting of Masaccio gave to the young Sandro, he learned from Filippo Lippi the concepts of warmer and proportional art.

Recent discovery also shows that Botticelli could have participated in making a fresco with his master, in Hungary, whose order was from Vitez Janos, Hungarian Archbishop. He was able to have his own art workshop by the year His works were seen as low relief, with drawings evident on outlines, and also having varying contrasts of light and shadow.