© Great Works of Western Art
1444 or 5 Born in Florence.
1460s Receives his initial training with Fra Filippo Lippi.
1470 First mentioned as an independent master.
1472 Enters the Compagnia di San Luca (the painters’ guild) in Florence.
1474 Works on a fresco in the cathedral at Pisa (destroyed in 1583).
1478 Paints Primavera, the first of his great mythological pictures.
1481 Botticelli travels to Rome where (together with Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Signorelli) he is employed by Pope Sixtus IV on the fresco decoration of the walls of the newly completed Sistine Chapel.
1482 Back in Florence, engaged in a number of commissions.
1484 Completes Birth of Venus.
1489 The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola arrives in Florence and denounces (among other things) the practice of painting images of holy personages in contemporary fashion. Botticelli becomes a devotee of the sect.
1498 Savonarola is burned at the stake for heresy.
1500 Completes the Mystic Nativity (in the National Gallery in London) which illustrates a considerable change in style from the serenity of his work in the 1480s, brought about to a large extent by recent religious upheaval.
1510 Dies in Florence.
1467 Adoration of the Magi, London, National Gallery
1467 Madonna della Loggia, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1467 The Return of Judith, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1465–70 Madonna del Guidi di Faenza, Paris, Musée du Louvre
1470 Madonna in Glory with Seraphim, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1470 Madonna and Child and Two Angels, Naples, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte
1470 Madonna and Child with an Angel, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
1470 Sant’Ambrogio Altarpiece , Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1474 St Sebastian, Berlin, Staatliche Museen
1470–75 Adoration of the Kings, London, National Gallery
1475 Adoration of the Magi, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1477 Portrait of Giuliano de’Medici, Washington DC , National Gallery of Art
1480–85 Birth of Venus, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
c1480 Primavera, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1481 Madonna of the Magnificat, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1478–82 Adoration of the Magi, Washington DC , National Gallery of Art
1482 Punishment of Corah and the Sons of Aaron, Rome, Sistine Chapel
1482 Moses Receives the Call from God, Rome, Sistine Chapel
1482 The Temptation of Christ, Rome, Sistine Chapel
c1485 The Annunciation, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
1480–85 Portrait of a Young Man, London, National Gallery
1480–85 Portrait of a Young Woman (Simonetta Vespucci), Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
1483–6 Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman, Paris, Musée du Louvre
1487 Madonna of the Pomegranate, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
1480–90 Venus and Mars , London, National Gallery
early 1490’s Last Communion of Saint Jerome , New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
1500 Mystic Nativity, London, National Gallery
