Although there is no official record of the year and day of Botticelli's birth, scholars consider as the most reliable source his father's tax declaration that on 1 March 1447 Alessandro was two years old, making 1445 his birth year. However, according to Florentine style the year began on March 25, thus translating the year of his birth to 1446 in the modern calendar. The son of Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, Alessandro--whose nickname derives from that of his brother Giovanni, called "Botticello" (little barrel)--entered Filippo Lippi's workshop toward the end of the 1450s. The mark of Lippi's style is clearly recognizable in Sandro's earliest paintings, works such as the Madonna and Child in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence and the Madonna and Child with an Angel in the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio. In the mid-1460s, perhaps because of Fra Filippo's departure for Spoleto in 1467, the young artist moved into the sphere of Verrocchio, whose style is reflected in another group of Botticelli's early paintings, which attest a more analytical vision, an interest in anatomy, and an attention to gestures that reveal states of mind. Works from this period include the Madonna and Child in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (no. 1298) and the Madonna and Child with Angels in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (no. 46). His first documented commission was for the figure of Fortitude (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, no. 1606), painted in 1470 to complete the series of allegorical images created by the Pollaiuolo brothers' workshop for the Tribunale della Mercanzia. To this period also belong the Virgin against a Rose-Hedge (no. 1601) and the diptych Judith and Holofernes (nos. 1484, 1487) in the Uffizi, in which the artist's perfect mastery of drawing and skill at expressing intense emotions demonstrate the full achievement of his maturity.
Fra Lippo Lippi, Songs full album zip
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