Welcome to The Lonely Pallet Reeds, an oral dive into classic works of art historical literature that never seemed interesting until they were read out loud to you, and you realize that gossip is gossip in every century.

Today, Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Artists,

a 1991 translation by Julia Conaway Bondinella and Peter Bondinella.

The Life of Sandra Botticelli, Florentine Painter, 1445 to 1510.

In the time of Lorenzo de Medici, El Magnifico, the elder, truly a golden age for men and talent, there

flourished the artist named Alessandro, shortened to Sandro, according to our custom, with

the second name Botticelli, for reasons we shall

soon discover. He was the son of Mariano Filippeppe, a Florentine citizen, who raised him very

conscientiously and had him instructed in all those things usually taught to young boys in the years

before they were placed in the shops. And although the boy

learned everything he wanted to quite easily, he was nevertheless restless. He was never satisfied

in school with reading, writing, and arithmetic. Disturbed by the boy's whimsical mind,

his father in desperation, placed him with a goldsmith, a friend of

his named Botticello, a quite competent master of that trade in those days. In that period,

very close relations and almost a constant intercourse existed between goldsmiths and painters,

and because of this, Sandro, who was a

clever boy and had taken a fancy to painting, turned completely to the art of design and decided

to devote himself to it. Thus, he confided in his father, who recognized the boy's aptitude and took

him to Fra Filippo, an illustrious painter of the

period at the Carmine, and arranged for him to teach Sando, just as the boy himself desired.

Sandra therefore put all of his energies into learning this craft. He followed and imitated his

master in such a way that Fra Falipo grew fond of him and taught him so thoroughly that he soon reached a level no one would have expected.

...