Sandro Botticelli canvas prints & artprints

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was born in 1445 in Florence. He was the son of a modest tanner from Borgo Ognissanti. At the age of 20, as he began an apprenticeship with a goldsmith, he discovered painting. This apprenticeship was a turning point in his training. It gave him a taste for chiselled motifs and his characteristic incisive line. He then became a pupil of the Carmelite friar Fra Filipo Lippi before opening his own workshop in 1470, when he received his first official commission. From 1481, Botticelli was called to Rome by Pope Sixtus to create three large frescoes to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. He then returned to Florence and painted two of his major works for the Villa Medicea di Castello of Lorenzo dei Medici, The Spring in 1482 and The Birth of Venus around 1485. Although the Church did not give him the recognition he was due during his lifetime, the city of Florence, through the Medici, offered him the opportunity to express and develop his art. Sandro Botticelli died in 1510.