Botticelli

By Isabella Alston

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as simply Sandro Botticelli, was born in Florence, Italy, probably in or around 1445. Serendipitously winning a high-profile commission from the Florentine court, he was catapulted to notoriety as wealthy patrons, in particular the Medici family, hired him to create works that celebrated their lives and their family’s lives and marked important events such as weddings. Botticelli’s range was wide: he embellished the walls of the Sistine Chapel with three frescoes, illustrated Dante’s The Divine Comedy (just under100 drawings still exist), and painted both mythological and religious scenes—Primavera and The Birth of Venus, and Adoration of the Magi, being respective examples of his excellence in the genre. Botticelli never wed, possibly due to his unrequited love for the married Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who died very young. By the end of 15th century, Botticelli came to believe that Humanism—a philosophy embraced by the Medici family—was amoral. His reaction was to burn many of his paintings and thereafter to produce only religious-themed works.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAJ Books International
• Release date: Nov 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781844063925

Isabella Alston

Isabella Alston was born in Los Angeles. As a dual citizen of Switzerland and the USA, she considers both Europe and America home. She is a free-lance writer, artist, and astrologer, currently living on the North Carolina coast with her husband, a US Marine, and their dog, Archer.

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BOTTICELLI

T&J

Published by TAJ Books International LLC 2014

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Copyright © 2014 TAJ Books International LLC

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ISBN 978-1-84406-332-1

Paperback 978-1-62732-020-7

Printed in China

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BOTTICELLI

T&J

I S A B E L L A      A L S T O N

Contents

Botticelli

Index

BOTTICELLI

c. 1445–1510

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as simply Sandro Botticelli, was born in Florence, Italy, probably in or around 1445. His father, Mariano di Vanni d’Amadeo Filipepi, was 50 years old at the time of his son’s birth and his mother, Smerelda, was 40 years old, unusually old for parents of that era. Historians are unsure as to how Alessandro came to be known as Botticelli, but two theories have been suggested. The first theory is that his older brother, Giovanni, was quite fat and therefore nicknamed Botticella, which means a keg or barrel. Botticelli means mini keg, an appropriate nickname for the younger brother. The second theory is that Alessandro was briefly an apprentice to another of his brothers who was a goldsmith. Botticelli’s primary job was to hit the gold repeatedly with a hammer to shape it, referred to in Italian as battigello, and this possibly could have morphed into Botticelli over time.

In 1462, around the age of 17, Botticelli was apprenticed to the artist, Fra