Botticelli Drawings

Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510) is one of the most beloved artists of the Italian Renaissance, especially known for his paintings La Primavera and The Birth of Venus. A lesser-known aspect of his career is his work as a draftsman. His drawings are extraordinary, yet their rarity and unconventional style have kept them from being more widely recognised.

Botticelli Drawings is the first major book to examine this aspect of Botticelli’s work. It considers the foundational role that drawings played in Botticelli’s oeuvre in terms of his aesthetic, practice, and process—from his earliest recorded drawings made under the master Fra Filippo Lippi to the experimental and expressive designs for his final paintings. This catalogue reunites the majority of Botticelli’s surviving sheets, including several new attributions, discussed in detailed object entries. Essays further highlight the development of the artist’s draftsmanship, the broader Florentine culture in which he worked, and his design practices as revealed in new technical analyses of the underdrawings of some of his most renowned paintings.

In its focus on little-known and unknown material by one of the best-known artists in the canon, this is a landmark publication in the field of Renaissance art that will be an important reference for years to come.

Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(November 18, 2023 – February 11, 2024)