Sandro Botticelli

1445-1510

Born in 1445 as the son of a tanner, Alessandro de Mariano Filipepi, known as Botticelli, rose to become one of the Medici's most sought-after artists at a young age. The nickname Botticello means "the little barrel". He became one of the great representatives of the early Renaissance.

As a portrait artist, he depicted the most famous Florentine nobles, leaving a lasting mark on the image of the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. As a painter of religious subjects, he left behind a wide-ranging oeuvre. But above all, he was groundbreaking in his incorporation of allegorical elements into art and introducing his new form of representation of female portraiture, the most famous of which - the "Idealised Portrait of a Lady" - has been the cause of much speculation for centuries. Yet some of the female figures in Sandro Botticelli's work were inspired by the same real model: Simonetta Vespucci, the ideal of beauty of her time. The allusions are unmistakable in the "Idealised Portrait of a Lady", but some people also believe to recognise her features in the painting "The Birth of Venus".

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