Alana White

GUID'ANTONIO'S WORLD

      Ambassador of Florence
       Born in 1436, Guid’Antonio Vespucci was the oldest son of Antonia Ugolini and Giovanni Vespucci. By the time of Guid’Antonio's birth, the Vespuccis ranked among Florence's leading families, with holdings in rental properties, vineyards, olive groves, silk shops, and wool. They lived in a palace on Borg’Ognissanti, near the Arno River. Like the sons of all wealthy Florentines, as a youth Guid’Antonio would have been educated in Latin, arithmetic and logic. Later, he studied civil law, rhetoric and poetry—the latter two deemed essential for the Renaissance practice of diplomacy.
       For his profession, Guid’Antonio chose "Doctor of Law." From the first days of his career, he supported the Medici family in its private administration of the democratic Florentine government. Drawn into the intrigue of Italian politics, eventually he left management of the extensive Vespucci business to the rest of the famiglia. This, while he served as ambassador in the service of Lorenzo de' Medici (Il Magnifico) and Florence during the most turbulent—and glorious—years of the Italian Renaissance. On an ambassadorial mission to France in 1476, he took with him his favorite nephew and secretary, Amerigo. Their sojourn with Louis XI lasted two years.

       Shifting Alliances and Family Quarrels
       Florence was one of five major powers that dominated Italy's patchwork of independent city-states. High on the northern cuff of the sunny, boot-shaped peninsula were VENICE and MILAN. A Republic on the Adriatic Sea, Venice's lifeblood was maritime trade—spices, slaves, precious metals and luxurious silks—an enterprise threatened by the steady advance of the Ottoman Turks who, by 1460, had, in the name of jihad (holy war), made significant inroads in Europe.
       West of Venice lay MILAN, stronghold of the Sforza dukes. Shifting alliances and family quarrels plagued the ducal succession. Relations between the Duchy of Milan and the Lion of the Adriatic were hostile, with each government aspiring to extend its frontier at the other's expense.
       Far to the south, at the ankle of the Italian boot, King Ferrante ruled NAPLES. The eldest of his two sons, Prince Alfonso (also titled Duke of Calabria), was a professional soldier with an eye to using Neapolitan military superiority to make his family's house (the House of Aragon) dominant in Italy.
       North of Naples lay the PAPAL STATES presided over in Rome by Pope Sixtus IV. While building and decorating the Sistine Chapel and adding to the Vatican library, Sixtus IV immersed himself in politics. Uncle to a slew of nephews and dedicated to nepotism on a grand scale, he made no fewer than six of them cardinals. For his favorite, Girolamo Riario, he wanted nothing less than a lordship in the Papal States where, in fact, the pope ruled in name only. While giving lip service to papal authority, local despots governed towns the pope considered his.
       Set in the rolling hills of the Arno Valley, FLORENCE, built on an ancient Roman site, was a Republic whose citizens clung to the trappings of a democratic form of government. Not for them a king, lord or duke. In the City of Flowers, the government changed with breathtaking frequency, as members of various committees were replaced by new men who qualified and had their names drawn from a "hat." While striving for freedom, Florentines made their Republic easy prey in the eyes of the four other major powers and outlying dukes and lords, as well. Florence's wobbly design kept the Republic weak at home, too, wounded by popular uprisings, political conspiracies and intrigue between rival houses.


       A Golden Age
       This was the fifteenth century and the age of Humanism, when humankind began to recognize and celebrate its own individuality and freedom. It was, as well, a time in which Italians already spoke of the age when they lived as the "rinascimento"—an era in which a new spirit of rebirth in life, art and literature prevailed. Nowhere was this more evident than in Florence, a city of 70,000+ souls. Within the stone walls of this city, along with his powerful young friends, brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, Guid’Antonio rubbed elbows with scientist and geographer Paolo Toscanelli, Humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino, politician Niccolò Machiavelli, craftsmen Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, and, in later years, the fiery Dominican religious, Girolamo Savonarola.

CLOTH AND COLOR: DRESSING THE RENAISSANCE

       “Cloth and color makes an honorable man.” So said wealthy Italian merchant-banker Cosimo de’ Medici nearly six hundred years ago, summing up the vital role clothing played among fashion-conscious and politically-minded fifteenth-century Florentines. In an age of emerging wealth and confidence, public clothing was crafted from the finest and most expensively dyed cloth, furred, and embellished with rich trimmings and jewels, thereby exhibiting the wearer’s standing amongst his or her peers. Upper class Renaissance Italians embraced every opportunity to spin community events into splendid social occasions. Establishing one’s high status and identity was the goal. Costume--dressing really, really well--was the key.

       By the 1450s in Europe, clothing had undergone a steady transformation from the medieval, shapeless cloaks meant to hide the contours of the body to clothing that showed an increasing concern for beauty and display. In 1466 a female relative of the wealthy Florentine widow, Alessandra Strozzi, fretted in a letter that she didn’t see how her daughters, who had been invited to a noteworthy wedding, could possibly attend, given the huge expense. Everyone else was commissioning new dresses and brocade coats not only for the ceremony on St. John’s Day, but also for the ten days of festivities leading up to the final event. She also noted that her girls were poorly provided with jewelry.
       In the early medieval era, clothing for men had been primarily militaristic: basic tunics, capes and trousers. Women wore clothing patterned on the tunic. Celtic-style jewelry was becoming a popular accessory. Only in the thirteenth century, after the Crusades had discovered the luxurious materials of the East and trade between the East and the West escalated, did garments become more extravagant. Following the Black Death in 1350, which wiped out up to a third of Europe’s population, the vitality of people too-long contained surged to the surface. Glad to be alive and in a celebratory mood, the wealthy, fashionable classes traded utilitarian footwear for soled hose along with narrow shoes with pointed toes and experimented with cone-shaped headdresses with veils. Sleeves widened. Hems flared.
       By the late 1300s, despite the sumptuary laws that sought to regulate clothing, the typical well-to-do lady was devoting much time and attention to her wardrobe. Margherita Datini, the young wife of an affluent merchant in Prato, Italy owned floor-length gowns of silk, velvet, and damask in a colorful array. The elaborate sleeves were detachable. Margherita’s were made of vermilion velvet, and squirrel and rabbit fur, and were to be mixed and matched with different dresses, according to weather and the season. Margherita’s husband, the prosperous merchant Francesco Datini, wore in public the elegant, ankle-length scarlet robe and scarlet cap favored by most fourteenth-century men of the upper merchant class in Italy.
       As the late medieval period faded into the 1400s, “fashion” took a hold on Europe’s elite families. Nowhere was this more evident than in Italy, where clothing was freer than in the rest of Europe, where silk damasks, velvets and brocades were the order of the day, and veils surrendered to artfully dressed hair often bleached to a pale blonde shade. By the time of Medicean Florence (with the return of Cosimo de’ Medici from exile in 1434) all public events in the city, whether the arrival of a foreign visitor, a wedding or a tournament, became an opportunity to make a fashion statement. Nowhere was this truer than in the creation of a wealthy lady’s wedding costume.

        Three Weddings
       On the day of her marriage, a young upper-class bride typically made her way from her father’s house to the house of her new husband, accompanied by her male kinsmen. Her colorful dress, stiff, full, richly embroidered and multilayered, might be made of silk brocade or silk velvet and adorned with jewels. Her headdress was fashioned from peacock feathers and pearls. She made an elaborate visual display, all eyes feasting on her as she progressed through the streets on the traditional white horse. This was family honor made visible and intended to impress, regardless of cost and the long and often tedious planning that went into the construction of the wedding finery.
       In the summer of 1447, Florentine Marco Parenti began assembling the wedding costume of his bride, Caterina Strozzi, in a time when it was not unusual for the groom to use his future wife’s dowry to decorate her for the wedding. For Caterina, Marco desired a giornea (a long sleeveless overgown open at the sides) of crimson silk velvet. He assembled the materials for delivery to the tailor, including fabric from the Marco Parenti silk firm, red cloth lining and eyelets from a goldsmith, and 188 little furs for the hem and borders, all for the outer garment. Beneath the overgown, Caterina would wear an inner garment, the cotta, with a quilted bodice, embroidery and furs, fringe, and green and gold ribbon. Caterina’s wedding headdress (ghirlanda) was embroidered with silver and pearls and finished with peacock feather roses. The belt was red silk with gold thread and a gilded silver buckle. Around her forehead, Caterina wore pearl braids wound over a padded roll.
       It’s no wonder that Caterina’s mother, the widow Alessandra Strozzi, went into raptures over her daughter’s wedding ensemble. Mona Alessandra wrote to her son that Caterina would wear the most beautiful clothes in Florence at a cost of more than 400 florins, a hugely extravagant sum.
       Not to be outdone, the following year rich Florentine widower Francesco Castellani began preparing wedding finery for his prospective bride, Lena Alamanni. Like Marco Parenti, Francesco settled on a crimson cut-velvet overgown, but one with sleeves (a cioppa). With input from both the Castellani and Alamanni families (and a poet, this being the Italian Renaissance), the materials were gathered and the prescribed outer garment fashioned by the tailor from red cut-and-figured silk velvet cloth. Next, came the overgown’s surface decoration, consisting in part of Francesco’s original and ornate embroidery design for the bodice and sleeves. For the bodice, he planned an eagle made of gold and pearls, flying toward the sun. This alone required thirty-four ounces of pearls, silken gold thread and small, silvered ornaments made by a goldsmith in his shop.
       Alas, despite all these preparations, this second marriage for Francesco Castellani did not take place. The dress was left unworn and eventually either sold to a used-clothes dealer or was fashioned into another garment.
       Although members of the Florentine ruling class most often claimed public events such as weddings as opportunities to demonstrate power and wealth, more modest Florentines like the apothecary Luca Landucci did their best to keep up. For his nuptials to Salvestra Pagni in 1466, Landucci recorded in his diary that Salvestra had as part of her bridal outfit a purple gown with brocade sleeves along with twisted gold fringe, gold ribbon, silk cords and ermine for trim, gold dangles for the collar, a pearl band for her forehead and a ribbon for her hair, among many other fine things. Salvestra brought a dowry of 400 florins, Luca wrote, adding: “Praise God!”

        And A Funeral
       While not as lavish as weddings, funerals also gave the wealthy class opportunities to orchestrate an impressive show. On the day of a notable person’s funeral, workshops and banks closed their doors. People lined the streets of Florence to watch the cortège pass and enjoy the “spectacle,” as one contemporary writer put it. Family members dressed the deceased in clothing made of vermillion silk, purple velvet, and gold brocade. Principal mourners usually costumed themselves in black, though they might sometimes choose red, while the lesser mourners could wear muted colors, like brown. Excluded from the public parade, women stayed home at the palazzo to prepare the funeral banquet, with widows dressed in black mourning mantle and veil.

        Pageants and Pleasures
       Tourneys were festive events held in celebration of a political victory, a wedding, or perhaps the visit of a pope or prince. And if a Renaissance wedding was primarily the lady’s day, nowhere else was a man better able to display his skill than in the staged tournament. Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tourney held in Florence in the winter of 1469 was one of the costliest spectacles Tuscany had ever witnessed. A procession of trumpeters, pages, squires in full armor, mounted noblemen, and then Lorenzo’s younger brother, Giuliano, led the “competitors” into the piazza, with Giuliano dressed in a silk doublet embroidered in pearls and silver. Three feathers worked in gold thread and set with pearls and rubies adorned Giuliano’s black velvet cap. Next came more pages on horseback, fifers and drummers, and at last, twenty-year-old Lorenzo himself, who was for all practical purposes now the head of the Medici family and the unofficial prince of the city.
       Lorenzo rode into Piazza Santa Croce costumed in a sleeveless velvet tunic with a cape of white silk edged with red. Roses and pearls decorated his silk scarf. The great Medici diamond, “Il Libro,” shone in the center of his shield. Pearls, rubies, and diamonds adorned his black velvet cap. His horse was richly draped with red and white velvet embellished with pearls. All this was at great expense, as Lorenzo noted in his diary in later years, totaling about 10,000 ducats. And although, as he says, neither his years nor his blows were very great, he had been awarded first prize, a silver helmet with Mars as its crest.
       Five years later in 1475, Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano celebrated his own tournament in Piazza S. Croce. “Giuliano the Beautiful” rode into the square carrying a standard decorated with a figure of Pallas in a golden tunic painted by Sandro Botticelli. His helmet had been fashioned in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop, where Leonardo da Vinci was an apprentice. This costumed extravagance was recorded in a poem, Angelo Poliziano’s Stanze della Giostra di Giuliano de’ Medici. Giuliano’s assassination (the Pazzi Conspiracy) three years later proved too much for the premier humanist of the Italian Renaissance, who left the celebratory poem unfinished.

        Devices and Desires
       As Lorenzo de’ Medici said, no one was surprised when he won the sporting contest that ushered him into manhood. This was, after all, a time when costumed “knights” took part in tournaments using blunted lances. Despite these precautions, even staged tournaments could be dangerous. The happily wed druggist, Luca Landucci, noted in his diary how in 1514 during a joust in Santa Croce one of the sixteen participants received such a blow he died within a few hours. Broken limbs in the jousting arena were commonplace. The death of forty-year old Henry II of France, who died after receiving a fragment of a shattered lance in the eye and brain during a joust, sounded the death knell of the sport in 1559. For the joust, Henry’s extravagant, adoring, and soon-to-be widowed Italian wife, Catherine de’ Medici, had ordered 300 lengths of gold and silver cloth from Italy for her gowns. Catherine, whose great-grandfather, Lorenzo de’ Medici, had almost a century earlier ridden into Piazza Santa Croce in a Renaissance display of dazzling proportions.
       By the fifteenth century people rarely witnessed the upper class in its finery. As an alternative, altar paintings and church frescoes in private family chapels provided the elite an effective way to display themselves to the populace in all their decorative glory. In the paintings of Renaissance artists like Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli we witness the meticulous designs and sumptuous fabrics in colors their wearers called “Peach Blossom,” “Apollo’s Hair,” and “Throat of the Dove.” Beautiful clothes represented in works of art became the way people brought honor to themselves, their city, their house, and their own personal legacy.

First published in Renaissance Magazine Issue #57

FLORENTINE MASTER SANDRO BOTTICELLI


       In the winter of 1458, 38-year-old broker Giovanni Filipepi filed his family’s tax report at the Palazzo della Signoria (present-day Palazzo Vecchio) in downtown Florence. In the report, Giovanni mentioned his brother Antonio, who was a goldsmith, and Simone, who was looking for work in Naples. Almost as an afterthought, Giovanni added that his youngest brother Sandro, a sickly schoolboy of 13, was learning to read and write.

       Giovanni’s official comments, along with a few other documents, are the only written record of Sandro Botticelli’s early life. Nevertheless, by placing what is known about Botticelli against the backdrop and customs of his time, it is possible to take a look into the life of one of the most celebrated painters of the 15th century.
       Sandro Botticelli was born in 1444 or 1445 on Borg’Ognissanti, in the industrial quarter of Florence, to tanner Mariano Filipepi and his wife Smeralda. Like other boys from working families, Botticelli would have been expected to learn a craft. Because his later paintings show signs of knowing the goldsmith’s art, he may have worked with his brother Antonio, learning to beat gold for use in ornate picture frames and jewelry.
       When Botticelli was about 17, he told his father he wanted to paint for a living, so Mariano took him to the flamboyant Florentine painter Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), a Carmelite monk who was as well known for his seduction of a young nun named Lucrezia Buti as for his portrayals of religious subjects. Botticelli probably became the monk’s apprentice and worked with him for several years in Prato, about ten miles outside Florence, while Fra Lippi decorated the town cathedral.
       In Prato, Botticelli would have risen at dawn and worked diligently with the master, learning how to draw, grind colors, and prepare canvas, walls, and wood paneling for paint. He would have met Filippo and Lucrezia’s son  Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) who, under Botticelli’s influence, later became a master painter in his own right.
       Because frescoes were the most popular way of decorating stone walls, master craftsmen such as Lippi took their apprentices to the great churches of Florence, where they sketched the religious scenes drawn high up on the walls. One frequent stop was the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, a stone’s throw from Mariano’s leather shop. Twenty years before Botticelli’s birth, young Tommaso Masaccio (1401-1428) had painted some frescoes in Santa Maria del Carmine, which were highly regarded because his figures looked full-bodied and alive instead of two-dimensional. Gazing up at Masaccio’s fresco series, Botticelli would have been perhaps inspired to give his own figures the sense of fully occupying their space.
       In the spring of 1467, Fra Lippi found work in Spoleto, decorating the choir of Spoleto Cathedral. Lippi departed Prato, taking ten-year-old Filippino with him. Quite likely, this is when Botticelli moved back home to his family in Florence and lived in the new house his father had bought on Via Nuova in the Santa Maria Novella quarter.
       Botticelli probably then went to work for the popular Florentine sculptor and engineer Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488). Another promising Florentine painter was Verrocchio’s apprentice, 15-year-old Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) who, in later years, commented on Botticelli’s preference for the human form: “Our Botticelli will not hear of landscape painting. He used to say you need only throw a sponge soaked in many colors against a wall, and you will see a pretty landscape in the resulting stain.”

        Medici Man
       During most of Botticelli’s lifetime, the Medici were the de facto rulers of Florence. When Botticelli was 24, the head of the Medici family, Piero de’ Medici, died. The eldest son Lorenzo, who was a strapping youth of 19, preferred raising horses, hunting wild boar, and writing poetry to politics. Nevertheless, Lorenzo accepted Medici family leadership.
       Botticelli may have met Lorenzo de’ Medici and his younger brother Giuliano at Verrocchio & Co., perhaps making them elaborate tournament swords and helmets. When Botticelli was about 25, he made two important decisions. He took 12-year-old Filippino Lippi, whose father had recently died, under his wing and into the Botticelli household. He then opened a workshop in his family’s house. Shortly thereafter, his connections with the Medici helped him win his first important public commission. In 1469, the Sei della Mercatanzia (a tribunal of six judges that tried disputes between merchants), having determined its meeting hall should be decorated with a panel series of the Seven Virtues, commissioned fiery Florentine craftsman Piero Pollaiuolo (1443-1496) to paint the virtue of Charity for them. Piero completed that work and expected to do the rest of the series, only to hear that Lorenzo de’ Medici’s uncle, Tommaso Soderini, had persuaded the Sei to allot two of the Virtues to Botticelli.
       Insulted, Piero took his case to court. In the end, Botticelli painted only one panel in the series—Fortitude—for which he received 20 florins. More importantly, however, his painting far excelled Pollaiuolo’s, and brought Botticelli his first public notice.

        Florence and Rome go to War
       On Easter Sunday, April 26, 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano during Mass at the Duomo. Lorenzo survived the assault, but Giuliano was stabbed to death.
       In the immediate aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy, as it came to be known, city leaders commissioned Botticelli to paint a fresco of the plot’s ringleaders on the wall of the city prison. Although the fresco is now long gone, contemporary sources say that beneath the fresco of several hanged figures, Botticelli painted Lorenzo’s bitter warning to his brother’s murderer, who happened to be the only conspirator who had gotten away: “I am Bernardo Bandini, another Judas. A murderous traitor in Church was I. A rebel awaiting more cruelly to die.”
       The cities of Florence and Rome then embarked on a two-year war, and many craftsmen lost work. Botticelli, however, had wealthy friends who could afford to continue to commission frescoes and other paintings from him.

        Painters and Prophets
       In 1480, Florence at last saw peace. The war between Florence and Rome had delayed the decoration of Pope Sixtus IV’s ceremonial chapel in the Vatican. Almost before the ink dried on the peace treaty, the pope invited Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Rosselli to come to Rome with Pietro Perugino and Luca Signorelli, to paint the Sistine Chapel’s walls. Botticelli completed The Temptation of Moses (or Moses and the Daughters of Jethro), The Temptation of Christ, and The Rebellion Against Moses, along the middle bands of the walls.
       Botticelli’s frescoes made his name in Italy and he received commissions to paint altarpieces, furniture, and tondi, the new style of round paintings featuring angels and Madonnas. He illustrated a fresh edition of The Divine Comedy, and when he was about 40, he painted The Birth of Venus for his patron Lorenzino de’ Medici’s home.
       But not all Florentines approved of secular art. In 1490, Girolamo Savonarola, a Domenican friar from Ferrara, initiated a series of events that would have profound consequences for Botticelli. In Florence Cathedral, Savonarola preached against tournaments, extravagant clothes, makeup, and perfume, shaking his fist and shouting, “The government is corrupt! Painters are evil-doers when they create pagan works!” For those who refused to change their ways, Savonarola forecast the destruction of Florence.
       Thousands of people crowded Florence Cathedral to hear the monk’s terrible warnings, among them Botticelli and Michelangelo, who was 15 years old at the time and living in the Medici household under Lorenzo’s patronage. While some early historians claimed Botticelli became one of Savonarola’s devoted followers, today most scholars take the more conservative view that Botticelli simply shared with other Florentines the sense of disturbance that came from Savonarola’s harsh censures. Certainly, the monk had a sobering effect on Botticelli’s art, due, in part, to his brother Simone, who was one of Savonarola’s passionate disciples.
       Savonarola forecast death—and at the age of 43, Lorenzo the Magnificent died. Savonarola predicted an invasion—and King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in an attempt to make good French claims on the Kingdom of Naples. Now in almost complete control of Florence, where an alarmed sense of fatality had overcome the city, Savonarola supported the French king. He also demanded that Florence cleanse itself of evil. In February 1497, with bitter cold settling over the city, his followers built a wooden tower in Piazza della Signoria. Church bells pealed as they burned games, mirrors, paintings, and books—anything they considered morally corrupt.
       Although early writers claimed Botticelli participated in the “Bonfire of the Vanities” by throwing some of his own paintings into the flames, scholars now doubt this is true. What is certain is that during these times, Botticelli opened his workshop as a meeting place for Savonarola’s friends and foes alike.
       By now, the pope despised Savonarola. Alexander VI had wanted to fight Charles VIII when the French king marched to Naples and the pope considered Savonarola’s support of France a slap in the face. The preacher’s claims that God was speaking through him represented a clear threat to the pope’s spiritual authority. The pontiff demanded that Savonarola stop making such claims, and the monk refused. Alexander threatened to punish Florence for supporting the preacher, town leaders put Savonarola on trial, found him guilty of heresy, and along with two other priests, burned him to death at the stake.
       Savonarola’s fate horrified those Florentines who saw the friar as God’s messenger. God, Savonarola had said, was leading the French army. With the millennium approaching, the preacher’s dark prophesies of war and the apocalypse seemed to come true when King Charles and his troops entered Florence and then marched south, conquering Rome and Naples, looting and massacring along the way.
       Botticelli had reached middle age, and from this time forward only two important paintings by his hand are extant, The Mystic Crucifixion (c. 1497) and The Mystic Nativity (c. 1501). With paintings such as these, Botticelli had, it seems, abandoned “pagan” works such as The Birth of Venus.

        Phoenix Rising
       Botticelli may have changed his artistic outlook, but he did not stop celebrating life. For a payment of 155 florins and a yearly fee of two capons, he bought a villa outside Porta San Frediano. He and his brother Simone took great delight in the farm, nicknaming it Casa da signore (“the gentlemen’s house”). In Florence, Botticelli still lived and worked in the family dwelling, painting portraits and devotional pictures. Together with Filippino Lippi, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino, he frescoed Spedaletto, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s villa. (Unfortunately, this fresco was destroyed by fire in 1825.)
       In 1504, the city asked him, along with Filippino, Leonardo, and Cosimo Rosselli to choose a suitable location for Michelangelo’s recently finished sculpture of David. Botticelli thought a pedestal outside Florence Cathedral was an appropriate spot for the white marble statue. But in the end, the town placed the 17-foot-high David in the Piazza della Signoria, not far from where, six years earlier, Savonarola had been burned at the stake.
       Times and tastes were changing and it was within four years that Michelangelo would be in Rome, painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Leonardo, 48, already had painted two masterpieces, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. And Raphael, a new young painter from Urbino whose star was rising, had just arrived in Florence.
       Botticelli grew old in the shadow of these giants, and his reputation faded. The last written record of him is in the Florentine Book of the Dead, which states simply that Sandro Botticelli was buried in the cemetery at All Saints Church on May 17, 1510.
       As decades became centuries and interest in the artist waned, Botticelli’s major works were forgotten. At the beginning of the 1800s, art historians, drawn to his imagination and refined sense of beauty, began to give his work a closer look. Today, people celebrate Botticelli’s art in churches and museums all over the world, including the Uffizi in Florence, where his masterpieces line Botticelli Hall. Recognized as one of civilization’s greatest painters, he has claimed his place not only among the stars of Italy’s golden age, but also in the hearts and minds of those who admire the sheer beauty of his art, particularly the graceful incandescence of his incomparable female forms.

First published in Renaissance Magazine Issue #58