Sandro Botticelli
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510
Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s
ID: 62396 Madonna and Child with an Angel 1465-67 Tempera on panel, 87 x 60 cm Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence It is possible that this somewhat awkward painting of the Madonna was produced while Botticelli was still working in the workshop of his teacher, Filippo Lippi. The initial inspiration for the painting came from the latter's famous Madonna in the Uffizi. Botticelli replaced the landscape with an arched architecture which frames the heads of the mother and child and emphasizes the two main figures as the centre of the devotional scene
