page_title: Sandro Botticelli
section_title: Key early paintings
hierarchical_section_title: Sandro Botticelli / Career before Rome / Key early paintings
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Darstellung der Mitglieder der Medici-Familie als Könige: Cosimo (kniend), Piero de' Medici und Giovanni (Rückenfiguren im Mittelpunkt) und Angehörige des Medici-Hofes
context_page_description: Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.
  As well as the small number of mythological subjects which are his best known works today, he painted a wide range of religious subjects and also some portraits. He and his workshop were especially known for their Madonna and Childs, many in the round tondo shape. Botticelli's best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in the Uffizi in Florence. He lived all his life in the same neighbourhood of Florence, with probably his only significant time elsewhere the months he spent painting in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481–82.
  Only one of his paintings is dated, though others can be dated from other records with varying degrees of certainty, and the development of his style traced with confidence.
context_section_description: A large sacra conversazione altarpiece of about 1470–72 is in the Uffizi. It is not in good condition, but shows Botticelli had mastered the posing of a group of eight figures "with a skillful semblance of easy naturalness in a closed architectural setting". One work that can be firmly dated is the narrow  Saint Sebastian made for a pier in Santa Maria Maggiore and dedicated in January 1474; it is now in Berlin. This was painted at the same time as the Pollaiuolo brothers' much larger altarpiece of the same saint, a showpiece of anatomical poses, with the saint shown in great pain. Though very similar in pose, no doubt after Botticelli had seen the other painting, Botticelli's Sebastian seems calm and poised, following the legend that the arrows did not kill Sebastian, whose wounds were miraculously healed.  The almost nude body is very carefully drawn; usually Botticelli was not greatly concerned with anatomical precision, and he painted relatively few nudes, though some are among his most famous works.  The delicate winter landscape, reflecting the traditional date of the saint's martyrdom and feast-day in January, is also one of Botticelli's more impressive efforts.     
  At the start of 1474 Botticelli was asked by the authorities in Pisa to join the work frescoing the Camposanto, a huge and prestigious project mostly being done by Benozzo Gozzoli, who spent nearly twenty years on it.  Various payments up to September are recorded, but no work survives, and it seems that whatever Botticelli started was not finished.  Whatever the outcome, that Botticelli was approached from outside Florence demonstrates a growing reputation.  
  The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475–76, now in the Uffizi, and the first of 8 Adorations), was singled out for praise by Vasari, and was in a much-visited church, so spreading his reputation.  It can be thought of as marking the climax of Botticelli's early style.  Despite being commissioned by a money-changer, or perhaps money-lender, not otherwise known as an ally of the Medici, it contains the portraits of Cosimo de Medici, his sons Piero and Giovanni (all these by now dead), and his grandsons Lorenzo and Giuliano.  There are also portraits of the donor and, in the view of most, Botticelli himself, standing at the front on the right.  The painting was celebrated for the variety of the angles from which the faces are painted, and of their expressions.
  A large fresco for the customs house of Florence, that is now lost, depicted the execution by hanging of the leaders of the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 against the Medici.  It was a Florentine custom to humiliate traitors in this way, by the so-called "pittura infamante". This was Botticelli's first major fresco commission (apart from the abortive Pisa excursion), and may have led to his summons to Rome.  The figure of Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa was removed in 1479, after protests from the Pope, and the rest were destroyed after the expulsion of the Medici and return of the Pazzi family in 1494. Another lost work was a tondo of the Madonna ordered by a Florentine banker in Rome to present to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga; this perhaps spread awareness of his work to Rome.  A fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio, headquarters of the Florentine state, was lost in the next century when Vasari remodelled the building. 
  In 1480 the Vespucci family commissioned a fresco figure of Saint Augustine for the Ognissanti, their parish church, and Botticelli's.  Someone else, probably the order running the church, commissioned Domenico Ghirlandaio to do a facing Saint Jerome; both saints were shown writing in their studies, which are crowded with objects.  As in other cases, such direct competition "was always an inducement to Botticelli to put out all his powers", and the fresco, now his earliest to survive, is regarded as his finest by Ronald Lighbown. The open book above the saint contains one of the practical jokes for which Vasari says he was known.  Most of the "text" is scribbles, but one line reads: "Where is Brother Martino? He w
caption: Adoration of the Magi, 1475, 111 cm × 134 cm (44 in × 53 in)
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