His style proved popular, and his portraits and religious paintings garnered him recognition. In the 1480s he executed his most famous works, including "Primavera" (1482), "Pallas and the Centaur" (1482), "Venus And Mars" (1483), "The Story Of Nastagio degli Onesti" (1483, four pictures illustrating a scene from Bocaccio's Decameron), and his most beloved work, "The Birth Of Venus" (1485), in reality an interpretation based on many myths of Venus coming ashore on the island of Cythera where she is supposed to have landed after her birth. It's said that Boticelli used Simonetta Vespucci, the lover of Giuliano de Medici, as a model. Her portrait Boticelli had also painted. In 1481, he was commissioned to decorate the walls of The Sistine Chapel by Pope Sixtus IV.
During the last years of the 15th century, the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola began urging Florntines to repent as the millennium approached, and Boticelli quickly became an ardent follower. His style changed to a more austere spirituality, and after Savonarola's death at the stake after he was tried for heresy in 1498, Botticelli's work eschewed any secular references. He died in 1510.
There is very little Botticelli worth noting on the Net, but Mark Harden's Texas net Art Gallery has a fine Botticelli exhibition that makes up for this absence. There is a biography here and reproductions of most of his key works. It can be accessed by going to http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/...
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