Sandro Botticelli

The art of Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) remains the epitome of the Florentine accomplishment during the Quattrocento, under the golden age of the reign of Lorenzo di Medici. Painter of such classic Orphic allegories as “Primavera” (c. 1482), “Venus and Mars” (c. 1483) and “The Birth of Venus” (c. 1485), Botticelli is, like Vermeer, a relatively recent rediscovery for art history, having been elected to posthumous stardom by the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites only after several centuries of neglect. The first monograph on Botticelli was published in 1893, and between 1900 and 1920, more books were written on him than on any other painter; today his name is synonymous with the aspirations and feats of Renaissance painting at its finest. This massive and splendid volume celebrates the graceful beauty of his women and the courtly solemnity of his compositional sense. One focus here is Botticelli's portraits, particularly those that depict his circle of patrons, for whose palaces he in turn created his grand mythological vignettes. Emphasis is also placed upon Renaissance ideals of feminine beauty as expressed in so many of Botticelli's works, not only in his images of Roman deities and of the Virgin Mary, but also of contemporary Florentine courtiers. With nearly 200 color illustrations, this book sets a decisive new benchmark for monographs on Renaissance art and on this perennial master.Called “The Little Barrel” (“Il Botticello”), Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, today known as Sandro Botticelli was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi in the early 1460s and had his own workshop by 1470. Ten years later he was among the artists commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to produce frescos for the walls of the Sistine Chapel. By the time of his death in 1510 he was among Florence's most influential artists, yet it was not until the English art historian Walter Pater revived his name in the 1870s that his work began to receive the adulation it is now accorded.

Who was Botticelli? For whom did he paint his famous pictures, and what do they mean? Art to Hear: Botticelli, an audio guide produced for a recent major exhibition of Botticelli's incredible canvases, addresses these questions and more. High-quality color reproductions of 30 masterpieces are accompanied by brief, accessible texts discussing the works.

In the 1480s, the great Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici to make a series of drawings to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy. Botticelli gave stunning visual form to the poet's epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, but the project was never completed and the sheets were scattered. Now, more than 500 years after their creation, all 91 existing -- and very fragile -- vellum sheets will be shown together for the first time, in Berlin, Rome, and London. This book, which accompanies the exhibition, illustrates each of Botticelli's canto sheets in superb color, faced by a commentary on Botticelli's pictorial response to Dante's poem by Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, where 84 of the sheets are permanently housed. Eight essays on Botticelli, the Medici, and the Divine Comedy complete this unprecedented volume.