Botticelli, Sandro Filipepi known as (1445-1510) 
- Name:
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Alessandro Filipepi known as Sandro Botticelli
- Dates:
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Florence, 1445 - 1510
- Attivitą:
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Painter
- Places:
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Florence, Rome
- Biographical information:
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Alessandro Filipepi was the youngest of the four sons of Mariano and Smeralda Filipepi. Mariano, who lived with his family in the parish of Ognissanti, was a "galigaio", that is a tanner of hides. In 1458 the Filipepi moved to Via della Vigna Nuova, to a house rented by the Rucellai. At this time Sandro was probably in the workshop of a goldsmith, and for a certain period he must have been working as an assistant to his brother, a jeweller by trade. In 1464 Mariano Filipepi purchased a house in Via del Porcellana. Among his new neighbours were the Vespucci, wealthy exponents of the notarial class, who were to become devoted commissioners of the artist. Possibly thanks to an introduction made by the latter, Sandro entered the workshop of Filippo Lippi, at the time engaged on the Prato frescoes, and he remained there up to 1467, when the master moved to Spoleto. Botticelli then moved on to the workshop of Andrea Verrocchio, which was a sort of hothouse for young talents, frequented among others also by Leonardo.
In 1470 Botticelli, who by now had his own workshop, received his first public commission: the Fortitude painted on panel to be inserted in the series of spalliera panels commissioned by Piero del Pollaiolo for the premises of the Tribunale della Mercanzia (Florence, Uffizi Gallery). In 1472 Sandro enrolled in the painters’ confraternity, the Compagnia di San Luca, and declared that he had with him in his workshop the son of Filippo Lippi, Filippino. Probably thanks to influential friends such as the Vespucci, Botticelli managed to introduce himself into the Medici circles. Effectively, in 1475 he painted the standard showing Pallas which was carried by Giuliano de’ Medici in the famous tournament in Piazza Santa Croce. Dating to the same years is the Adoration of the Magi commissioned for Santa Maria Novella by Gaspare De Lama, in which the artist portrayed Cosimo il Vecchio, Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici in the garb of the three kings.
1481 marked an important turning-point in Botticelli’s artistic career: together with Cosimo Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Pietro Perugino, he went to Rome on the orders of Lorenzo il Magnifico to fresco Scenes from the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ in the Sistine Chapel. The following year the four artists returned to Florence preceded by the fame and prestige which this enterprise had brought them. Subsequently, Sandro executed a number of paintings portraying complex allegories inspired by the sophisticated culture, replete with Neoplatonic philosophy, promoted by Lorenzo il Magnifico and the intellectuals that gravitated around him. Subscribing to this cultural climate was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, cousin of the Magnifico, who commissioned some of Botticelli’s most famous masterpieces: the Primavera and the Pallas and the Centaur recorded in the house in Via Larga, the Birth of Venus, possibly for the Villa of Castello (paintings now in the Uffizi), and finally the 93 illustrations of Dante’s Inferno illuminated on parchment, produced between 1490 and 1496 (now divided between the Berlin museums and the Biblioteca Vaticana).
In the meantime, from the end of the 1480s Botticelli’s attention turned increasingly towards devotional subjects, and he executed altarpieces and chamber paintings characterised by an ever more artificial, dramatic and pathetic style. The last important profane allegory painted by Botticelli was the Calumny, given to his friend Antonio Segni (circa 1497; now in the Uffizi). The artist’s sensibility was greatly affected by the strong personality of Frà Girolamo Savonarola and at the same time by the dramatic events that overwhelmed Florence after the death of the Magnifico in 1492. The latest works, such as the Pietà of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan and the Mystic Nativity dated 1501 (London, National Gallery), illustrate an intense spiritual tension expressed through a simplified, archaic style.
With the passage of the years, Botticelli’s commissions and esteem began to dwindle. In 1504 he was summoned to serve on the committee convened to decide upon the location of Michelangelo’s David. In 1510 Sandro died, old, sick and alone, as Vasari tells us. He was buried in Ognissanti.
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