Where can you see Sandro Botticelli in Florence?

At the Uffizi Gallery: The Birth of Venus, Primavera, The Adoration of the Magi and Pallas and the Centaur. At the Church of Ognissanti: Saint Augustine in his Study. Museums move and lend their works, so check before a special journey.

What is Sandro Botticelli's most famous work in Florence?

The Birth of Venus, of about 1485, at the Uffizi Gallery. The goddess blown ashore on a shell, painted on canvas, which was rare then. It is not a birth but an arrival: she is already grown.

When and where was Sandro Botticelli born?

About 1445, at Florence, Italy. Sandro Botticelli died on 17 May 1510, at Florence, Italy, aged about 65.

What is Sandro Botticelli known for?

Painted the Birth of Venus and the Primavera for the Medici. The Uffizi has more of his paintings than any other museum. Is buried in the church of Ognissanti, in the quarter where he was born. Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter, of the Early Renaissance.

Painter, 1445 to 1510

Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli was born a few streets from the church where he is buried, and hardly left. The paintings that have made him the most loved painter of the Renaissance were made for the Medici and their friends, and they have never gone far.

Born: 1445, Florence, Italy
Died: 1510, Florence, Italy
Movement: Early Renaissance
In Florence: 5 works in 2 museums

Where to see Sandro Botticelli in Florence

Each work with the museum it hangs in. Museums move and lend their works, so check before a special journey.

Uffizi Gallery4 works

The Birth of Venus
about 1485
The goddess blown ashore on a shell, painted on canvas, which was rare then. It is not a birth but an arrival: she is already grown.
Primavera
about 1480
Nine figures in an orange grove, with Venus at the centre, the three Graces dancing and Flora scattering roses. Botanists have counted hundreds of kinds of plant in the grass.
The Adoration of the Magi
about 1475
The three kings have the faces of three Medici. The young man in a yellow cloak at the right edge, looking out at us, is taken to be Botticelli.
Pallas and the Centaur
about 1482
The goddess of wisdom takes a centaur by the hair. Her dress is embroidered with the interlaced rings of the Medici.

Church of Ognissanti1 work

Saint Augustine in his Study
1480
A fresco on the wall of the nave, facing a Saint Jerome by Ghirlandaio. Botticelli's tomb, a round stone in the floor, is in a chapel of the same church.

The life of Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro Filipepi, called Botticelli, was born in Florence about 1445, the son of a tanner, and trained with Filippo Lippi. By his thirties he was the painter the Medici circle turned to, for altarpieces, portraits and large pictures of pagan myths that nobody had painted on that scale before.

In the 1490s, under the preaching of Savonarola, his work turned dark and anxious. He died in 1510, poor and out of fashion, and was forgotten for three centuries.

What to know

Painted the Birth of Venus and the Primavera for the Medici
The Uffizi has more of his paintings than any other museum
Is buried in the church of Ognissanti, in the quarter where he was born

Born: About 1445, Florence, Italy
Died: 17 May 1510, Florence, Italy