But while this is true, and true in the first degree of Sandro and his work, they express besides other moods, and betray other influences. The later quatrocento was the time not only of Lorenzo and the Platonists, but of Savonarola also, the last great figure of the Middle Ages, strangely proclaiming the new days; and with him, of foreign incursions into Italy and Florence, of violence and all the black-brood of religious and civil strife. And at the end of those days came Michael Angelo, whose sombre masculine genius stands in such striking contrast to all the subtle grace and wistful gladness of Botticelli.
But Botticelli, who was of the circle of the neo-Platonists, was also among those who loved the friar of Ferrara; if he was the friend of Leonardo da Vinci he was associated also with Michael Angelo. In his life, and in the work which is the expression of that life, we can read plainly the perplexity and the discords, as well as the new and arresting harmonies of that time. His wonder is not all a glad reverence; it is sometimes, and increasingly, a poignant questioning of the sibyls.
I
The life of the painter appears to have been uneventful, and all that is known of him can be told in little space. His father was a Florentine tanner, and his elder brother followed the same trade, and was nicknamed Botticello, "little barrel." The family patronymic was dei Filipepi, but the painter signed himself "Sandro di Mariano," the latter being his father's name. Sandro (Alexander) was, perhaps, the son of a second marriage, for he was young enough to have been the child of his brother Giovanni, the tanner, whose nickname became affixed to him. He was probably born in 1444, in a house close to All Saints (Ognissanti) Cemetery in the present Via della Porcellana. His father was now in middle life, and a prosperous man. The lad was delicate, quick and wilful, perhaps a spoilt child. He was older than usual when he went at about fifteen into a goldsmith's shop, doubtless that of Antonio his second brother. But he was not long contented there. A year or two later he was studying painting under that famous friar, Fra Lippo Lippi. Unless Browning has misunderstood the Carmelite brother, the worship of beauty was his real religion; and, mere child of nature as he was, he sought to tell the significance which he found in her face—not indeed by the mere illustration of theological doctrine and pietistic conception, but by the transcription in pure line and perfect colour of a language that had for him no other words.
The friar was living in the neighbouring city of Prato, painting frescoes in the Cathedral, when Sandro joined him and became his favourite pupil. How long he remained with his master is uncertain, but it is probable that the fruitful relationship continued until after he came of age. Perhaps he was twenty-four when he returned to Florence, and became associated with the brothers Pollajuolo, for whom, in 1470, he executed the first commission of which we have record. But as he was now twenty-six, this cannot be his earliest work. There is a hillside shrine near Settignano, which contains a Madonna—Madonna della Vannella—formerly ascribed to the friar, but which is now believed to be one of the earliest efforts of his pupil. And in the National Gallery the long panel of the "Adoration" officially ascribed to "Filippino Lippi" has by general consent been transferred to Sandro, and assigned to the period before his association with the Pollajuoli.
Here it should be said that none of Botticelli's paintings is clearly signed and dated; and even indirect documentary proofs are wanting in the case of the majority of his works. Much has therefore to be decided by the doubtful and highly technical tests of internal evidence. These are rendered more difficult by the receptivity of this artist, who came late to maturity and was throughout his life profoundly affected by external influence; but on the other hand, his work has certain mannerisms as well as excellences special to it, which even his imitators and students failed to reproduce.
The brothers Piero and Antonio Pollajuolo exercised a profound influence over the young artist. Filippo had taught him to paint emotion—the Pollajuoli were masters in another school, and sought to delineate physical force. There is a little panel by Antonio in the Uffizi, of Hercules and the Hydra, in which every line is almost incredibly tense with the expression of energy—the fierce muscular swing and clutch of struggle. To some extent Sandro was already a man standing upon his own feet; and the scientific studies of anatomy and perspective in which he was now encouraged, increased his power of expression without distracting it from its proper purpose.
In 1469 Fra Filippo died, and three years later his son Filippino, then fourteen years old, became Sandro's pupil. From this it would appear that by 1472, when he was twenty-eight years of age, Botticelli had left the Pollajuoli, and had a workshop, or bottega, of his own, in the family house where the income-tax returns of 1480 describe him as still working. Here in 1473 Lorenzo the Magnificent, who four years earlier had become master of Florence, commissioned him to paint a St. Sebastian; and from this time forward the Medici gave him frequent proofs of their appreciation. In the following year he went to Pisa, where he had some prospect of a large commission. This, however, fell through; he failed, Vasari tells us, to satisfy himself in his trial picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, a subject not well suited to his mind. Instead he returned home and painted a banner of Pallas, for Lorenzo's younger brother Giuliano, the idol of Florence, to carry in the magnificent tournament of January 1475. The banner has been lost, but it marks a point of departure in Sandro's art; as a banner, it recalls the fact that the artist was also a craftsman, and introduced a new method of making such things; the new patron, too, whose life and love were alike destined to so brief a course, whose personality was so vivid and so knightly, exercised no little influence on the painter; but most of all we note the changed theme, first among those classical subjects which the artist was in a special sense to make his own. Botticelli painted portraits both of Giuliano dei Medici and his adored lady, Simonetta, the beautiful young wife of Marco Vespucci; and, though these are lost, it is generally believed that Simonetta's lovely and innocent charm of face and character inspired many of his happiest fancies. She died in 1476, and two years later, Giuliano was assassinated during Mass in the Duomo. Sandro was employed by his brother—who himself had narrowly escaped death on the same occasion—to commemorate the assassins' shame by painting their portraits on the face of the Palazzo Publico. A task more suited to his temper was the celebration of Lorenzo's diplomatic success, when in 1479 he succeeded in detaching the King of Naples from a hostile alliance against Florence. This occasioned the painting of "Pallas and the Centaur," now on the walls of the Pitti, one of Sandro's most consummate pieces of decorative work.