Sandro Botticelli His only large painting with a mythological subject ever to be sold on the open market is the "Venus and Mars", bought at Christie's by the National Gallery for a rather modest £1,050 in 1874. The first nineteenth-century art historian to be enthusiastic about Botticelli's Sistine frescoes was Alexis-François Rio; Anna Brownell Jameson and Charles Eastlake were alerted to Botticelli as well, and works by his hand began to appear in German collections. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood incorporated elements of his work into their own. Walter Pater created a literary picture of Botticelli, who was then taken up by the Aesthetic
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