Sandro Botticelli
Probable self-portrait of Botticelli, in his Adoration of the Magi (1475)
The Florentine master Alessandro di Mariano Filippi Botticelli, better known as Sandro Botticelli, became at one point the foremost painter of Florence.
He painted deeply-felt religious pictures and pioneered large-scale mythologies. Note the way Botticelli portrays the human figure: always with great dignity, strange and distant, with dreamlike unreality and distortions. Botticelli is of the great draftsmen of all time. His later work is odd and retrogressive because he retreated into the past, unable to cope with Florence’s turbulent descent into social and political turmoil.
Botticelli’s subjects have wonderful bone structure—especially in their cheeks and noses, long and refined hands, wrists, feet, and ankles—and beautifully manicured nails. Notice his fascination with pattern—in elaborate materials, hair, and crowds, which he turns into designs of shape or color or both.
Botticelli’s major works are The Madonna of the Magnificat,c. 1480–81 (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi); Virgin and Child with Eight Angels, c. 1481–83 (Berlin: Staatliche Museum); La Primavera (see pages 98–99); The Birth of Venus, c. 1484 (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi).
References:
- Robert Cumming. Art: complete encyclopedia. – 512 p. – Moscow: Astrel, 2005.
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