The Age of Renaissance 1420-1600
The Birth of Venus, c. 1485 / Primavera c. 1478
Galleria Degli Uffizi, Florence
Born Alessandro Di Mariano dei Filipepi, Botticelli acquired his nickname (little barrel) from his brother Giovanni, who raised him and who was himself thus named. From 1458 to 1467 he worked in the studio of Fra Lippo Lippi before branching out on his own. By 1480 he was working on he frescoes for the Sistine Chapel and his lesser works consist mainly of religious paintings, although it is for his treatment of allegorical and mythological subjects that his id best remembered. Outstanding in this group are his painting Primavera and The Birth of Venus, both now in the Uffizi, Florence. He also excelled as a portraitist and provided the illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy, which he executed in pen and in and silver-point（1402-1405). He was one of the first Renaissance painter to use mythological as well as purely religious subject, prefacing the work of Michaelangelo and Leonardo.
Sandro Botticelli: Born 1445 Florence, Italy. Died 1510.
