Botticelli was influenced by Fra Filippo Lippi, who taugh him to draw outlines and create the effect of transparency. With his help, he became skilled enough to create portraits for the Medici family. Most of Sandro's paintings were religious in tone. Examples are Madonna, the Child With Two Saints and the Coronation of the Virgin. Other works, like Spring, contained allegorical and philosophical meanings. He was most admired for his graceful linework. Like Michelangelo, Botticelli was hired to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel. He designed three different scenes. Later in life, he had a 'religious crisis' due to the influence of a priest called Savonarola. Thus his paintings grew more religious and less mythical. After his death in 1510, Botticelli was rediscovered during the Pre-Raphaelite movement some three hundred years later. Another posthumous achievement was presented to him when a room at the Uffizi was named in his honor.

Nearly all the Madonnas of Botticelli have that expression which has been referred to as 'peevish', but they are more humanly impressive than some of Raphael's apathetic Virgins.
-Julia de Wolf Addison, The Art of the National Gallery (1905)

Botticelli's Venus is not at all the amorous strumpet of paganism, but, pale and withdrawn, dissolves into his image of the Virgin Mary.
-Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (1969)

Botticelli prefers presentation to representation.
-Bernhard Berenson, attr. saying, quoted in Venturi, Botticelli (1937)

La Primavera
1477-1478
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Birth of Venus
1480
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Madonna of the Pomegranate
(Madonna and Child and six Angels)
c. 1487
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The Annunciation
1489-1490
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Pietà
1495-1500
Pinakothek, Munich