(real name, Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi). Born in 1445, in Florence; buried there May 17, 1510. Italian painter of the Florentine school.

Botticelli studied with Filippo Lippi circa 1465–66. In 1481 and 1482 he worked in Rome. At the beginning of his career Botticelli was a typical representative of the early Florentine Renaissance. His early works were marked by clear-cut spatial arrangements, precise modeling based on light and shadow, detailed narration, and attention to the details of everyday life (Adoration of the Magi, circa 1470, National Gallery, London, and circa 1476–77, Uffizi Gallery, Florence; and the diptych Story of Judith, 1470–1472, Uffizi). A number of Botticelli’s early works (the Fortitude Allegory, 1470, Uffizi; and St. Sebastian, 1474, Picture Gallery, Berlin-Dahlem) show the influence of A. Verrocchio and A. Pollaiuolo. At the end of the 1470’s, Botticelli became close to the Medici family and the humanists grouped around them. In the atmosphere of the Medici court his art became more refined and aristocratic, and the characteristics of the artist’s brilliantly individual manner were intensified. In Botticelli’s pictures on ancient and allegorical themes (Spring, circa 1477–78; the Birth of Venus, circa 1483–84; and Pallas and the Centaur, circa 1485, all in the Uffizi), the poetically generalized, sensual pagan images are imbued with an exalted spirituality. The animated quality of the landscape, the fragile beauty of the figures, the musicality of the light, palpitating lines, and the transparency of the cool, refined colors that appear to be woven of reflections create an atmosphere of dreams and luminous lyrical sadness. The composition, with its classical harmony, is enriched by an intricate play of rhythmic lines (Madonna of the Magnificat, circa 1482–83, and the Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487, both in the Uffizi). A number of Botticelli’s paintings of the 1480’s show traces of unrest and vague anxiety. The 82 frescoes he painted in 1481 and 1482 in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican (Scenes from the Life of Moses, Destruction of the Sons of Korah, and others) combine the majestic harmony of the landscape and the monuments of antique architecture with the inner tension of the subject and a multiplicity of portraits. Botticelli’s portraits are distinguished by the recreation of character and fine, barely perceptible nuances of man’s inner being (for example, the portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici, 1470, the Carrara Academy, Bergamo). In the 1490’s, during the period of social unrest that had shaken Florence and of Savonarola’s mystical preaching, Botticelli’s art showed moral and dramatic qualities and religious exultation (Calumny, after 1495, Uffizi; Pietà, after 1490, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan; and Scenes from the Life of St. Zenobius, circa 1505, Picture Gallery, Dresden, the National Gallery, London, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York). The sharp contrasts of bright colors, the inner tension of the drawing, and the dynamics and expressiveness of images attest to a crisis of the artist’s world view. Botticelli’s illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1492–97, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, and the Vatican Library), despite their keen emotional expressiveness, retain an effect of lightness and clearness. Botticelli’s works, which absorbed the best traditions of Italian 15th-century art, reflected the profound contradictions in the spiritual life of Florence at the end of the century.