Early Italian Renaissance

Sandro Botticelli

bottocelli

Sandro's father was a tanner named Mariano di Vanni Filipepi. Both his mother, Smeralda, and father were born about the same time, 1395.

Botticelli means "little barrel" and is a reference to his older brother Giovanni born around 1422, Giovanni was an important supporting member of the household throughout Sandro's youth. Giovanni's nickname stuck as the surname for most of the brothers. His first name, Sandro, is the common shortening of Alessandro in speech.

Of eight children of Mariano and Smeralda, Sandro was the yougest. Only four boys of the eight children grew to adulthood: Giovanni (22 when Sandro was born), Antonio (14 when Sandro was born), and Simone, who was born the year before.

Giovanni was a broker of Florintine public debt; and Antonio was a goldsmith.

Since the exact date of Sandro's birth is not known; ages are approximate. More than that most of the pictures do not have firm dates associated with them. And authorities differ greatly, sometimes even with themselves, so this biographical chronology should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Most of Botticelli's paintings are dated using external evidence of when it existed, marking a date by which it must have been completed, coupled with an evaluation of the style of the art to refine when Botticelli worked on the picture.

Sandro is a sickly school boy learning to read and write Greek and Latin.

Father buys a house and the family moves to Via della Vigna Nuova.

Sandro sets up his workshop in the Via dell Porcellana.

Samdro's reputation as a great painter spreads from Florence to greater Italy.

Fortitude
about 1470
tempera on panel; 167×87 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Discovery of
the Dead Holofernes
about 1469-70
tempera on panel; 31×25 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Sandro paints: Adoration of the Magi Tondo Second Version.

Sandro registers in the guild list of the Compagnia degli Artisti di San Luca, the Florentine artists guild.

Filippino Lippi, the son of his teacher, becomes Sandro's student.

20 January Sandro's picture of St Sebastian is installed in Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence.

Sandro establishes a connection to the Medici family. This will last for many years.

The Adoration of the Magi version three with the principal Medici family members as the three Magi. (see below.)

28 April Giuliano de'Medici is murdered during mass in the Florence Doumo. Lorenzo, his elder brother manages to escape to the sacristy. This was the climax of the Pazzi family conspiracy against the rule of the Medici. It failed because they failed to kill Lorenzo, but resentment against dictatorial Medici rule continues.

Sandro is commissioned by the Vespucci family to paint the fresco of St Augustine for Ognissanti Convent. It is designed to match the fresco of St Jerome by Ghirlandaio.

Sandro paints: Virgin teaching the Child to Read

Virgin Teaching
the Child to Read
(Madonna del Libro)
about 1480
tempera on panel; 58×40 cm
Museo Poldi Pezzoli
Milan, Italy

St Augustine
1480
fresco; 185×123 cm
Chiesa di Ognissanti
Florence, Italy

April-May: paints "The Annunciation" for San Martino, a hospital for plague victims (not shown).

Sandros is summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to to work on the Sistine Chapel.

He is joined in Rome by Dominico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli and Pietro del Perugino.

They do a series of fourteen major frescos, stylized fresco portraits of the first thirty popes, and a decorative fresco drapery to link everything together. Sandro does three major frescos and some number of Popes, exactly which ones are not known. See examples below.

Scenes from
the Life of Moses
349×558 cm

Rebellion against
the Law of Moses
349×570

Jewish Sacrifice and
Three Temptations of Christ
345×555 cm

20 February Sandro's father dies, while Sandro is in Rome. By spring Sandro is back in Florence.

Sandro paints The Adoration of the Magi (fourth version)

He begins work on four paintings on a story of courtly love, based on a Boccaccio story. This is a wedding gift to be hung in a marriage bedroom (see below).

Pallas and the Centaur
about 1481-83
Egg tempera on canvas
207×148 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Primavera
(Allegory of Spring)
about 1481-83
tempera on poplar
203×314 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Sandro paints Mars and Venus this painting is also a wedding accessory. In this case probably for some member of the Vespucci family (see above).

In this year he also probably painted a pair of wedding accessories for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco; a member of the secondary branch of the Medici. These are Pallas and the Centaur and Primavera.

The Birth of Venus
about 1484
tempera on Canvas
173×279 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Madonna
of the Magnificat
[also called: Our lady of the Magnificat]
1483
tempera on panel; d: 118 cm
Uffizi, Florence, Italy

The Virgin and Child
between
John the Baptist and
John the Evangelist
1484
tempera on panel; 185x180 cm
Staatliche Museen Preussischer
Berlin, Germany

Together with Filippino Lippi, his former student, and Perugino and Ghirlandaio he decorates Lorenzo's country villa, Spedaletto, with frescos. Probably many frescos considering the number of artists.

Spedaletto is destroyed in a fire in the 19th century so little is known of these frescos.

Young Man
about 1489-90
tempera on panel; 41x33 cm
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC, US

Note: After five-hundred years there is still no consensus among authorities on the meaning of events in Savanarola's life. I suppose differences in justification of the actions of Savonarola and the Catholic curia should be expected, and they certainly are present. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives a totally different view of the proceedings against the monk than does for example Encyclopedia Britannica. Being a non-participant on either side of this argument. I say a pox on both their houses. (Or should that be a pax.) Anyway I have gone mostly with The Catholic Encyclopedia dates and steered a middle line with the descriptions of what and why it happened. The Catholic's ought to know the dates; they have the documents, and they burned him. — ed.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola becomes Prior of the Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. He sparks a renaissance of religious fervor and preaches against the corruption of the Papacy and enunciates a personal responsibility for the care of ones soul. This runs counter to Church policy of having to buy forgiveness from sin from the Vatican. He sees Revelations being acted out in the political events leading up to the end of the millennium. (The people of Florence, in general, are gripped by a mass fear, it was was sort of a fifteenth century version our year 2K hysteria.)

Fra Bartolomneo:
Fra Girolamo Savonarola
about 1497
Museo di San Marco
Florence, Italy

On 8 April Lorenzo de'Medici, the Magnificent, dies. Piero his 21 year old son takes over the rule of the city.

Columbus discovers the East Indies, but this won't be widely known for a couple of years, but he never reaches the mainland of either North or South America (or India, his goal, either). That won't be understood for a long time.

Sandro's brother, Simone, returns from Naples after living 23 years away from Florence. Together, on 19 April, they buy a country villa with a view of the Arno valley.

Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni are jailed for conspiring with Charles VIII of France against Piero de'Medici.

Savonarola preaches against the Medici and the Medici family is expelled from Florence by popular uprising. Savonarola becomes the single authority in Florence.

The Pierfrancescos escape and join Charles VIII. In early November the French take the city.

The city allies itself with the French. On 23 November, the French leave and Savanorola claims that the city was saved from destruction by his prayers.

In arguments about the form the new government should take, Savonarola sides with the democrats against the aristocrats, seeking a wider influence in government from the citizens. Savonarola's influence with the common people grows and with it his political power.

This results in a common assembley that characterizes itself as a "Christian and Religious Republic". One of its first acts is to make sodomy into a capital offense. Previously it was a minor offense punishable by a fine.

A plague year.

Despite the fortunes of the Medici, Sandro remains in contact with the Medici family.

On 8 September Savonarola is prohibited from preaching and commanded to come to Rome to defend himself. Savonarola begs that travel would endanger his health and refuses to come to Rome. He also continues to preach.

Sandro acts as an intermediary for Michaelangelo to communicate with the Medici, Pierfrancesco. Michaelangelo, was close to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco who had commissioned his first fake antique sculpture of a cupid.

There is friction between Sandro and the neighbor of his country villa. They seem to be at each other's throats.

Another plague year.

A neighbor of Sandro's when he was growing up, Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) sails across the Atlantic into the Gulf of Mexico and up the East coast of North America. He is the first European explorer to reach mainland North and South America.
That's the reason the USA is not the USC, United States of Columbia. And why the two continents aren't North and South Columbo. Now why Colombia is Colombia is for you to Google.

Sandro and his neighbor sign a court enforced document that they will not annoy each other on pain of a 50 florins fine.

7 February, Savonarola initiates the first "Bonfire of the Vanities": a grand revival meeting, Fra Savonarola preaches, and the people of Florence bring their luxury goods and burn them to show they mean to live the proper life. Dirty pictures were a popular item to throw on the fire. How many of Sandro's paintings were destroyed in this way is unknown. Encyclopedia Britannica says few paintings were lost this way.

On 12 May Savonarola is excommunicated by the Pope, but in defiance he continues to preach, calling the excommunication invalid..

On 7 April, a trial by fire is planned to settle the validity of Savonarola's excommunication. Savonarola's objects, but one of his top aids will walk on fire against a Franciscan monk. The terms of the contest say that any party who doesn't show or who even flinches going in the fire loses.

A large crowd shows up to see a miracle, but the Franciscan fails to appear, and it rains. Technically by the rules of this engagement Savonarola has won. But growing discontent with his government and failure of the trial by fire act as a catalyst against the monk. The crowd turns against Savonarola.

On 8 April Savonarola's enemies step in and he and his two top aids are arrested. Over the next weeks Savonarola and his aids are tortured, and tried by a civil court.

On 22 May the sentence of the civic court is upheld by an Ecclesiastical court and on the 23rd Savonarola and the two other leaders of his group are hung and burned at the stake in Florence's Piazzo della Signoria.

Anonymous:
Execution of Savonarola
in the Piazzo della Signoria AD1498
about 1499
Museo di San Marco
Florence, Italy

Sandro is deeply affected by the unjustness of the execution. His brother, Simone, is an ardent follower of Savonarola, and he flees to Bologna to escape capture and torture.

The old artist's guild had gone out of style, and the records are poorly kept. In the autumn, the Arte de' Medici e Speziali absorbs the artist's Guild and begins to enforce guild rules. Many artists, including Sandro, had not bothered to matriculate when they should have, probably because their dues increased after matriculation. However the new civic rules require full membership in good standing of a guild to vote or hold public office. This encourages following guild rules and payment of dues. On 15 November, Sandro matriculates and registers in the guild list.

Sandro paints the The Mystical Nativity and begins the San Zenobio pictures.

Sandro Botticelli dies. He is buried in the Ognissanti Convent not far from where he was born.

But the style of his art is no longer fashionable. He is quickly forgotten except as a minor footnote in the history of art. Modern scholarship shows that the biography of Sandro in Vasari's Lives of the Artists tends to be biased and unreliable; but it did keep his name alive.

Interest in Botticelli's art did not reawaken until the "pagan" works of the Renaissance became the in-thing during the fin de siecle period in Paris, during the last quarter of the 19th century. Interest in his art has remained popular throughout the 20th century; and it is likely to remain so.