Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) was a Florentine painter of the Early Renaissance, best known for Primavera and The Birth of Venus. The son of a tanner in the Ognissanti quarter, he took his nickname, 'little barrel', from his round-bodied brother Giovanni. Apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi from about 1461, he had his own workshop by 1469.

His Adoration of the Magi (c. 1475), with portraits of the Medici and of himself, spread his name. He worked on the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481–1482, and in the 1480s, his best decade, finished large mythological paintings for the Medici circle and many Madonnas.

By the 1490s his work returned to an archaic, Gothic manner. He never married and died in Florence on 17 May 1510, buried in Ognissanti at the foot of Simonetta Vespucci's tomb. His reputation stayed eclipsed until the Pre-Raphaelites rediscovered him in the late 19th century.