On March 1, 1445, the Florentine painter of the early Renaissance period Alessandro Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli, was born.
Born into the family of a wealthy city dweller, leather tanner, Sandro Botticelli received a good education. Already in childhood, he showed a love of painting. At the age of fifteen he began to study in the workshop of the famous Florentine sculptor Andrea Verrocchio, and in 1470 he opened his own workshop.
During this period, Lorenzo Medici, an art lover, came to power in Florence, and Botticelli became his favorite painter. Most of the artist's most famous paintings were commissioned by the Medici. For example, "Adoration of the Magi" (1477), where the whole Medici family is depicted in the form of biblical characters who have come to pay tribute to the newborn Christ.
As a court artist, Botticelli could not avoid political orders: on the wall of the Bargello Palace, he depicted the hanged participants in the conspiracy against Lorenzo Medici, as a result of which Lorenzo's brother Giuliano died.
Botticelli's two most celebrated works are Spring (c. 1477-1478) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1483-1484). The image of Venus sliding along unsteady waves on a sea shell is one of the most captivating female images in world art. The face of Venus, a pagan goddess with extraordinary beauty, Botticelli gave the spirituality more characteristic of the images of the Madonna.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1482 - 1486 Uffizi, Florence.
In the years 1481-1482, Botticelli, together with the painters Rosselli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, painted the walls of the Sistine Chapel with frescoes. Three frescoes by Botticelli - "The Youth of Moses", "Punishment of Korea" and "Healing of a Leper" - brought him fame far beyond the borders of his native city. Returning to Florence, the artist did not have time to take orders for new paintings, wealth and reverence came to him.
But Botticelli did not know how to manage money prudently, in addition, being extremely sensitive by nature, in the 1490s, like many other creators of the early Renaissance, he fell under the influence of the fanatical monk Savanarola. In his sermons, he justly condemned the idleness, the unbridled customs of the rich people of Florence, the tyranny of the Medici. But Savanarola took up arms against art, considering any manifestation of light, love of life and beauty in it to be sinful. Savanarola and his supporters organized massive burnings of secular books and art.
Promotional video:
"Mystical Christmas" by Sandro Botticelli.
In one of the squares of Florence, Botticelli himself threw his paintings into the fire, after which he practically stopped painting. But the artist did not know any other craft, he did not save money, and therefore fell into terrible poverty. In 1498, by order of Pope Alexander VI, Savanarola was arrested, convicted, accused of heresy and executed.
Botticelli responded to the death of Savanarola with the painting "Christmas" (1501). There is nothing in it either from the previous Botticelli, or from the Renaissance: a complete denial of the laws of perspective, the scale of figures, which depends not on the proximity or distance of an object, but on its significance - these are signs of a return to the Middle Ages.
Botticelli spent the last years of his life in solitude, was very sick and walked, leaning on two sticks. And his place was taken by other creators, those who are commonly called the "titans of the Renaissance." They managed to pave the way for art to light, joy, simple human feelings. But it was the beautiful paintings of the early Botticelli who showed them the way.