The fragile loveliness and enigmatic mood of Sandro Botticelli's paintings have haunted the Western imagination for five centuries. A puzzle even to his contemporaries, he mingled chasteness and voluptuousness, Christian piety and abandon. In The Birth of Venus and the Primavera he created two radiant testaments of sensuous beauty. Then, at the end of his life, falling under the spell of the fanatical Savanarola, he reversed his style and even burned many of his early works.
Today Botticelli's paintings hang in museums and private collections throughout the world. In this volume his greatest works have been gathered together in an exhibition almost impossible to assemble with the originals. Thirty pages are in full color; as a special feature, six of the color plates are reproduced across two and three pages together with details. This stunning array of color is supplemented by more than twenty pages of black-and-white illustrations printed in duo-tone.