Sandro Botticelli at its most effective, emphasized by the soft continual contours and pastel colors. The "Primavera" and the "Birth" were both seen by Vasari in the mid-16th century at the Villa di Castello, owned from 1477 by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, and until the publication in 1975 of a Medici inventory of 1499, it was assumed that both works were painted specifically for the villa. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise: the "Primavera" was painted for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's townhouse in Florence, and "The Birth of Venus" was commissioned by someone else for a different site. Botticelli painted only a small number
Sandro Botticelli earliest popes seem to have been mainly Botticelli's responsibility, at least as far as producing the cartoons went. Of those surviving, most scholars agree that ten were designed by Botticelli, and five probably at least partly by him, although all have been damaged and restored. The "Punishment of the Sons of Corah" contains what was for Botticelli an unusually close, if not exact, copy of a classical work. This is the rendering in the centre of the north side of the Arch of Constantine in Rome, which he repeated in about 1500 in "The Story of Lucretia". If he was