''I always have the idea in mind that when Botticelli was an old men nobody cared about him because he was out of fashion. Imagine, Botticelli was out of fashion!''
- Norbert Bisky
One of the greatest painters of the Florentine Renaissance. His The Birth of Venus and Primavera are often said to epitomize for modern viewers the spirit of the Renaissance...
Sandro Botticelli's date of birth is not certain, but his father, who worked as a tanner, submitted tax returns that claimed Botticelli was two years old in 1447 and 14 years old in 1458. Therefore, art historians have assumed that he was born around 1445. Very little is known about the artists's early life, but it is thought that he grew up on the Via Borgo Orgnissanti in Florence where he lived a poor life.
According to legend, one of the artist's four older brothers gave him the nickname ''Botticelli''.
Early Training and Work
According to art historian Giorgio Vasari, in his influential book Lives of the Artists, published in 1550, Botticelli entered the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1459) towards the end of the 1450s. Lippi is known for his simple and beautiful paintings, especially of the Madonna and Child. He taught Botticelli the techniques of panel painting and fresco and gave him an assured control of linear perspective. After, Botticelli had developed his own strong and resonant colour schemes.
*Madonna and the Child
After Lippi left Florence for Spoleto, Botticelli worked to improve the comperatively soft, frail, figural style he had learned from his teacher. Already by 1470 Botticelli was established in Florence as an independent master with his own workshop. Absorbed in his art, he never married, and he lived with his family.
The forms in his paintings are defined with a line that is at once incisive and flowing, and there is a growing ability to suggest the character and even themood of the figures by action, pose, and facial expression.
Mature Artist
Botticelli worked in all the current genres of Florentine art. He painted altarpieces in fresco and on panel, tondi(round paintings), small panel pictures, and small devotional triptychs. Three of Botticelli's finest religious frescoes(completed 1482) were part of the decorations of the Sistine Chapel undertaken by a team of Florentine and Umbrian artits who had been summoned to Romein July 1481.
Florentine tondi were often large, richly framed paintings, and Botticelli produced major works in this format, beginning with the Adoration of the Kings to became adept at harmonizing his figures with the circular form. Also, Botticelli is the earliest European artist whose paintings of secular historical subjects survive in some numbers and are equal or superior in importance to his religious paintings.
Mythological Paintings
Many of the commissions given to Botticelli by these rich patrons were linked to Florentine customs on the occasion of a marriage which the themes of such paintings were either romantic, exalting love and lovers, or exemplary, depicting heroines of virtous fame. Among the greatest examples of this novel fashion in secular painting are four of Botticelli's most famous works: Primavera(c. 1477-82). Pallas and Centaur(c. 1485), Venus and Mars(c. 1485), and The Birth of Venus(c. 1485).
*Primavera
Pallas and the Centaur
Venus and Mars
The Birth of Venus
Late Works
After the early 1490s his style changed markedly; the paintings are smaller in scale, the figures in them are now slender to the point of idiosyncrasy, and the painter, by accentuating their gestures and expressions, concentrates attention on their passionate urgency of action. Botticelli, according to Vasari, took an enduring interest in study and interpretation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Throughout the 1490s and was still payinh his dues, if belatedly, to the Company of Saint Luke, the Florentine painters' guild, in 1505.
*Dante's Divine Comedy
Vasari also suggests that, as his work fell out of favour, Botticelli became melancholic and depressed. He had never married, preferring the company of family and friends. Having always been known for his high spirits and quick wit, the image of Botticelli's final years as a rapid decline into poverty, isolation and mental anguish is a poignant one.
After his death, his name all but diseppeared until the late 19th century...
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