Sandro Botticelli: Drawings & Paintings (Annotated)

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, or as he was known as Sandro Botticelli, is an Italian artist from the early stage of Renaissance. Botticelli belonged to the Florentine school under the patronage of Lorenzo de 'Medici. After his death, Botticelli's glory was forgotten until the end of the 19th century when it suddenly reached its peak; his paintings and his method of work were then he adopted as a reference to the linear grace of early Renaissance painting.Besides the small number of mythological themes, which are his most famous works today, he has also painted a wide range of religious topics as well as some portraits. Botticelli and his workshop were particularly well-known for their images of Madonna and Childs, most of them made in a circular form called tondo. The most significant works of Sandro Botticelli are his two canvases The Birth of Venus and Primavera.Throughout his life, he lived in the same neighborhood of Florence, and his only longest overseas was Pisa's several months in 1474, and a few more while working on the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome 1481-82.Botticelli was an independent master craftsman since the 1470s, gradually improving his technique and mastery, and his reputation and the 1480s were his most successful decade when all of his great mythological paintings and many of his best Madonna was painted.By 1490, his style became more intimate and somewhat abstinent and could be seen as opposed to that of Leonardo da Vinci and the new generation of artists who had already shaped the style of the High Renaissance, while Botticelli began to return to some a way of the Gothic style.Some art historians have described him as "an outsider in the main Italian painting," which has had a limited interest in some of the works most related to Quattrocento style, such as the perspective, realistic depiction of human anatomy, and the use of direct associations of classical art. His training allowed him to present all these aspects of painting in his works simultaneously but he did not accept or contribute much to their development.