Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings - Volume I.djvu/228

May 17, 1510. Florentine school; real name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, but took name of Botticelli from his master, a goldsmith, to whom he was apprenticed. Studied painting with Fra Filippo Lippi, at whose death (1469) he was, says Vasari, the best master in Florence. He is the only contemporary whom Leonardo da Vinci mentions by name in his treatise on painting. The grace, sympathetic feeling, and imaginative quality of Sandro's work give it a greater hold upon the mind than that of many painters who surpassed him in technical knowledge and in feeling for beauty. Student and illustrator of Dante, a reader of Boccaccio, with a taste for classical mythology, and of a serious turn of mind which brought him under the influence of Savonarola, in the latter part of his life, this painter poet worked with genuine freshness of feeling. His art is always refined and elevated, though not altogether free from a naïve mannerism whose quaintness gives it a peculiar charm. As an example of his Lippesque manner see the Madonna with Angels, Uffizi, painted about 1480, to which year belongs the fresco of St. Jerome, Ognissanti, Florence. The Adoration of the Magi, and the Fortitude, Uffizi, show the influence of Pollajuolo, who painted the series of Virtues to which the latter belongs, an influence which is also perceptible in the Calumny of Apelles, and the Birth of Venus, Uffizi. The Allegory of Spring, Florence Academy, illustrates the poetic side of Botticelli's art. Before 1484 he was called to Rome by Sixtus IV., and painted the frescos of the destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; Moses smiting the Egyptian at the Well; and the Temptation of Christ, Sistine Chapel. Other works are four small pictures attributed to Mantegna, Palazzo Adorno, Genoa; Triumph of Chastity, Turin Gallery; Judith, Holofernes found by his Soldiers, Adoration of Magi, Uffizi, Florence; Coronation of the Virgin, S. Jacopo di Ripoli, Florence; Coronation of the Virgin, Florence Academy (1481-84); Madonnas, Pitti and Corsini Galleries, Florence, National Gallery, London, and Louvre, Paris; Portraits, the Bella Simonetta, Pitti, portrait of a man, attributed to Masaccio, Palazzo Corsini, Florence, and of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Berlin; Pietà, Munich; Nude Venus, Berlin; Nativity, Mars and Venus, Venus Reclining, Assumption, National Gallery, London; Adoration of the Magi, Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Whether Botticelli engraved any of the so-called playing cards which he designed is uncertain, but probably they, as well as his illustrations to the edition of Dante with Landini's Commentary (1481), were engraved by Baldini.—Vasari, ed. Mil., iii. 309; C. & C., Italy, ii. 413; Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 38; Burckhardt, 544; Dohme, 2i; Lübke, Gesch. ital. Mal., i. 350.

BOUCHER, FRANÇOIS, born in Paris, Sept. 29, 1703, died there, May 30, 1770. French school; history and genre painter, mostly self-taught; attended three months the school of Le Moine, then employed in drawing for engravers from his own compositions or Wattelet's. In 1723 he obtained the first prize at the Academy and later went to Rome with Carle van Loo. Returning to Paris in 1731, was received into the Academy in 1734, became professor in 1737, director in 1765, and after the death of Carle van Loo was appointed first painter to the