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 the Infant St. John the Baptist (Botticelli) Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John the Baptist (Botticelli) The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist is a tempera painting on wood executed by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli and his studio (Bartolomeo di Giovanni or Raffaelino di'Carli). The tondo, painted in Florence between the years of 1490 and 1500, addresses a central theme of the Italian Renaissance art: the divine motherhood. The work is currently housed in the São Paulo Museum of Art. The iconography of the Madonna with the infant Jesus is one of the most recurrent themes throughout art history.