The Birth of Venus even surpassing him. Giving added support to this interpretation of Botticelli as a born-again Apelles is the fact that that very claim was voiced in 1488 by Ugolino Verino in a poem entitled "On Giving Praise to the History of Florence." While Botticelli might well have been celebrated as a revivified Apelles, his "Birth of Venus" also testified to the special nature of Florence's chief citizen, Lorenzo de' Medici. Although it now seems that the painting was executed for another member of the Medici family, it likely was intended to celebrate and flatter its head, Lorenzo de' Medici. Tradition associates
Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) or two earlier. <BR> Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) The Madonna and Child with Two Angels is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, dating to c. 1468-1469. It is now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, in Naples. The work was once attributed to Filippino Lippi, master of Botticelli. The composition essentially derives from Botticelli's master (and Filippino Lippi's father) Filippo Lippi. The faces and other details suggest around the same period of the "Fortitude" and the other juvenile Madonnas of the Italian painter. The composition is similar to Verrocchio's "Madonna of the Milk", probably