Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510 Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s   Related Paintings of Sandro Botticelli :. | Primavera | La Vierge et l'Enfant entoures de cinq anges | Virgin and Child Enthroned between Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist | Lorenzo Tornabuoni | The Birth of Venus (mk36) |
Related Artists:
Antonio del Pollaiuolo
b. 1431/32, Firenze, d. 1498, Roma
Barbara Bodichon
1827-1891 was an English educationalist, artist, and a leading early nineteenth century feminist and activist for women's rights. She was the illegitimate child of Anne Longden, a 25-year-old milliner from Alfreton, and Benjamin Leigh Smith (1783-1860) , an MP's only son, who was himself a Radical MP for Norwich. Benjamin (Ben) had four sisters. One, Fanny Smith, married into the Nightingale family and produced a daughter, Florence Nightingale; another married into the Bonham-Carter family. Ben's father wanted him to marry Mary Shore, the sister of William Nightingale, now an in law by marriage Ben Smith's home was in Marylebone, London, but from 1816 he inherited and purchased property near Hastings: Brown's Farm near Robertsbridge, with a house built around 1700 (extant), and Crowham Manor, Westfield, which included 200 acres. Although a member of the landed gentry, Smith held radical views. He was a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a supporter of Free Trade, and a benefactor to the poor. In 1826 he bore the cost of building a school for the inner city poor at Vincent Square, Westminster, and paid a penny a week towards the fees for each child, the same amount as paid by their parents. On a visit to his sister in Derbyshire in 1826 Smith met Anne Longden, a 25-year-old milliner from Alfreton. She became pregnant and Smith took her to a rented lodge at Whatlington, a small village near Battle, East Sussex. There she lived as 'Mrs Leigh', the surname of Ben Smith's relations on the Isle of Wight. Barbara's birth created a scandal because the couple did not marry. Smith rode on horseback from Brown's Farm to visit them daily, and within eight weeks Anne was pregnant again. When little Ben was born the four of them went to America for two years, during which time another child was conceived. On their return to Sussex they lived openly together at Brown's, and had two more children. After their last child was born, in 1833, Anne became ill with tuberculosis and Smith leased 9 Pelham Crescent, which faced the sea at Hastings
Levitsky, Dmitry
Russian Painter, 1735-1822 .Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Together with Fyodor Rokotov and Vladimir Borovikovsky, he ranks foremost among 18th-century Russian portrait painters. He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Grigory Levitsky-Nos (1697-1769), a priest, engraver and painter. He also studied under Aleksey Antropov, who had come to Kiev to decorate St Andrew's church (1752-5). In the late 1750s Levitsky went with Antropov to St Petersburg, where he stayed until 1764; he continued with lessons from Antropov to whom, it appears, he owed the objectivity that was to characterize his work. It is probable that he also studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, attending classes under Louis Lagren?e. Levitsky worked with Antropov on the decoration of triumphal arches in Moscow for Catherine II's coronation in 1762. His first known portraits are rather formal, for example that of the architect Aleksandr Kokorinov (1769; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), which won Levitsky the title of Academician in 1770. In such works he made successful use of a compositional structure typical of formal European portrait painting, intended to emphasize the importance of the sitter.