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 main belt asteroid "29361 Botticelli" discovered on 9 February 1996, is named after him. Sandro Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his "Vita" of Botticelli as a "golden age". Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance