Sandro Botticelli: A “Golden Age” Painter

Sandro Botticelli - Agony in the Garden - c. 1500 - Tempera on panel, 53 x 35 cm - Museo de la Capilla Real, Granada (click photo for larger image)Born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, (1445-1510), Botticelli's name is derived from that of his elder brother Giovanni, a pawnbroker who was called Botticello (“Little Barrel”). 

As is often the case with Renaissance artists, most of the modern information about Botticelli’s life and character derives from Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, & Architects, as supplemented and corrected from documents. 

Botticelli’s father was a tanner who apprenticed Sandro to a goldsmith after his schooling was finished. But, since Sandro preferred painting, his father then placed him under Filippo Lippi, who was one of the most admired Florentine masters. Lippi’s painterly style, which was formed in the early Florentine Renaissance, was fundamental to Botticelli’s own artistic formation, and his influence is evident even in his pupil’s late works. Lippi taught Botticelli the techniques of panel painting and fresco, and gave him an assured control of linear perspective. Stylistically, Botticelli acquired from Lippi a repertory of types and compositions, a certain graceful fancifulness in costuming, a linear sense of form, and a partiality to certain paler hues that is still visible even after Botticelli had developed his own strong and resonant color schemes.

Interestingly, just as Lippi as had trained Botticelli, so did Botticelli eventually train his teacher’s son, Filippino Lippi. Also like his teacher, Botticelli also became closely tied to the Medici. Botticelli’s work eventually fell out of favor, but interest in it was revived by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He is now widely regarded as one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance.

The work featured here is the only one of Botticelli's paintings known to have been exported from Italy during the artist's lifetime. It is recorded as being in the possession of Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Castille, in 1504. It was probably brought to the court of Castille by a merchant, accompanied by various other luxury goods.