Sandro Botticelli Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua bought him a painting said to be a Botticelli out of historical interest "as from the hand of an artist by whom Your Highness has nothing, and who was the master of Leonardo da Vinci". That mistake is perhaps understandable, as although Leonardo was only some six years younger than Botticelli, his style could seem to a Baroque judge to be a generation more advanced. The "Birth of Venus" was displayed in the Uffizi from 1815, but is little mentioned in travellers' accounts of the gallery over the next two decades. The Berlin gallery bought
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli, 1475) these powerful personages is hard to tell. It is, however, apparent from the great pains in which Botticelli bestowed on these figures, that this formed an important part of the task. Also Gaspare himself is said to be included in the painting, as the old man on the right with white hair and a light blue robe looking and pointing at the observer. Furthermore, also Botticelli is alleged to have made a self-portrait as the blonde man with yellow mantle on the far right. In his "Lives", Vasari describes the "Adoration" in the following way: of the heads in this