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
Virgin and Child with an Angel (Botticelli) Virgin and Child with an Angel (Botticelli) Virgin and Child with an Angel also known as Our Lady of the Eucharist (Italian: "Madonna dell'Eucarestia") is a tempera on wood panel painting by Sandro Botticelli made c.1470. It is now held by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, acquired from Prince Chigi in 1899. The painting measures and one of a series of Madonna paintings by Botticelli from 1465 and 1470. It shows influences from Filippo Lippi's "Virgin and Child and Angels" of c.1465 held by the Uffizi. The Virgin Mary is shown in a three quarter view, with