Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli was a leading painter of the Florentine Early Renaissance. He trained under Filippo Lippi and won the patronage of the Medici family. His line is graceful and flowing, and his figures have a weightless, slightly melancholy beauty.

In later life, influenced by the preaching of the friar Savonarola, his style became more austere and devout. After his death his reputation faded for nearly three centuries, until the English Pre-Raphaelites rediscovered him in the nineteenth century.