Sandro Botticelli

Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) created some of the most recognizable images in Western art through his lyrical line and graceful figures. Born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi in Florence, he trained under Fra Filippo Lippi before establishing his own workshop by 1470. The powerful Medici family became his primary patrons, commissioning mythological works that epitomized Florentine humanist culture.

The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both painted for the Medici villa at Castello, remain icons of Renaissance art. Botticelli's figures possess an ethereal quality, seemingly weightless with flowing hair and diaphanous drapery. Pope Sixtus IV summoned him to Rome in 1481 to paint frescoes in the Sistine Chapel alongside other leading artists. After Savonarola's religious upheaval in the 1490s, Botticelli's style became more austere, though he never entirely abandoned secular subjects. Today millions queue at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to see his mythological masterpieces. Works also hang at the National Gallery London, the Louvre, and the Prado.