Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli, painter and draughtsman, was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy in his lifetime, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and commended by the great diplomatic, scholarly, and artistic leaders of his time. Lauded for his superb technique as a draughtsman and colorist and for his skilled use of the new tempera grassa medium, his art represented the maturation of the humanist conception of painting. By his death, however, Botticelli's reputation was already waning - overshadowed by the advent of the High Renaissance style - and his name virtually disappeared from the art historical canon. This fully illustrated Grove Art Essentials title delves into Sandro Botticelli's life and working methods and explores the artist's career from early training and the production of his mythological and religious masterpieces to the eventual reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum at the close of the 19th century.

Charles Dempsey is former Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art and now Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins University.

I. Life and work. 1. Training and early career, to c. 1478. 2. Years of maturity, c. 1478-90. 3. Late years, after 1490. II. Iconographical interpretation. 1. Mythological and allegorical works. (i) The 'Primavera'. (ii) The 'Birth of Venus'. (iii) 'Mars and Venus'. (iv) The 'Calumny of Apelles'. 2. Religious works. III. Working methods and technique. IV. Character and personality. V. Posthumous reputation. Bibliography Early sources General Monographs Specialist studies