Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/237

1510] Botticelli's genius soon attracted Lorenzo de' Medici's notice, and at his command the young artist painted a St. Sebastian for the church of S. Maria Maggiore. This noble figure, now in the Berlin Gallery, was probably executed before Antonio Pollaiuolo's more famous version of the subject, and although inferior as an exhibition of technical skill to the elder master's work, shows a far higher sense of beauty and power of expression. To these same early days we may assign the lovely Chigi Madonna, now in America, with the youthful Angel, crowned with green bay leaves, offering a dish of grapes and ripe ears of wheat to the Child.

In 1474, Botticelli was invited to assist Benozzo Gozzoli in the decoration of the Campo Santo, and spent the summer months at Pisa, where he began a panel of the Assumption, for the Duomo, and received payments for the ultramarine which he employed, but never seems to have finished his picture. His presence was required at home, and during the next few years he became closely associated with the fortunes of the Medici. Lorenzo's keen eye early recognised the quick sympathy and fine poetic feeling which fitted Sandro to be the painter of these classic myths and fancies dear to the scholars and humanists who met in the halls of the Via Larga, or spent the summer days at the Magnifico's pleasant country-houses. It was for his kinsman Lorenzo di Pier Francesco's villa of Castello that Botticelli painted his famous pictures of the Birth of Venus, the Primavera, and Mars and Venus, which breathe the charmed atmosphere of Lorenzo's songs and Poliziano's idylls. All three of these pictures, so full of the