🖌️🎨 Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

 🖌️🎨 Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) – Italian painter, one of the greatest artists of the early Renaissance.
Studying in the workshops of Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Verrocchio, Botticelli mastered the techniques of perspective and foreshortening; he also had a keen sense of architectural design and anatomy.
Occupation: artist, draftsman, architectural draftsman, fresco painter.
Movement: Renaissance.
Years active: 1473–1505.
Patron: Medici family.
Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi was born on March 1, 1445, to Mariano and Smeralda Filipepi.
Like many residents of the area, his father was a tanner. The first mention of Alessandro, like other Florentine artists, appears in the so-called "portate al Catasto," a cadastre where income declarations for tax purposes were recorded, which, according to a decree of the Republic of 1427, the head of every Florentine family was required to submit.
In 1458, Mariano Filipepi indicated that he had four sons: Giovanni, Antonio, Simone, and thirteen-year-old Sandro, adding that Sandro was "learning to read; he's a sickly boy."
Alessandro received his nickname, Botticelli ("little barrel"), from his older brother. His father wanted his youngest son to follow in the footsteps of Antonio, who had been working as a goldsmith since at least 1457, thus establishing a small but reliable family business.
According to Vasari, such a close relationship existed between goldsmiths and painters at that time that entering the workshop of one meant gaining direct access to the craft of the other. Sandro, who had become quite skilled in drawing—an art necessary for precise and confident "blackening"—soon became fascinated with painting and decided to devote himself to it, while not forgetting the invaluable lessons of goldsmithing, particularly the precision of contour lines.

Around 1464, Sandro entered the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi of the Carmine

monastery, the most accomplished painter of the time, leaving in 1467 at the age of twenty-two.