internal evidence we must put
latest in the master's career are three panels illustrating the story of
St Zenobius, of which one is at Dresden and the other two in the
collection of Dr Mond in London. The documentary notices of him after
1500 are few. In 1502 he is mentioned in the correspondence of Isabella
d'Este, marchioness of Gonzaga, and in a poem by Ugolino Verino. In
1503-1504 he served on the committee of artists appointed to decide
where the colossal David of Michelangelo should be placed. In these and
the following years we find him paying fees to the company of St Luke,
and the next thing recorded of him is his death, followed by his burial
in the Ortaccio or garden burial-ground of the Ognissanti, in May 1510.

The strong vein of poetical fantasy and mystical imagination in
Botticelli, to which many of his paintings testify, and the capacity for
religious conviction and emotional conversion which made of him an
ardent, if belated, disciple of Savonarola, coexisted in him, according
to all records, with a strong vein of the laughing humour and love of
rough practical and verbal jesting which belonged to the Florentine
character in his age. His studio in the Via Nuova is said to have been
the resort, not only of pupils and assistants, of whom a number seem to
have been at all times working for him, but of a company of more or less
idle gossips with brains full of rumour and tongues always wagging.
Vasari's account of the straits into which he was led by his absorption
in the study of Dante and his adhesion to the sect of Savonarola are
evidently much exaggerated, since there is proof that he lived and died,
not rich indeed, but possessed of property enough to keep him from any
real pinch of distress. The story of his work and life, after having
been the subject in recent years of much half-informed study and
speculation, has at length been fully elucidated in the work of Mr H.P.
Horne cited below,--a masterpiece of documentary research and critical
exposition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Vasari, _Le Opere_ (ed. Milanesi), vol. iii.;
Crowe-Cavalcaselle, _Hist. of Painting in Italy_, vol. ii.; Fr.
Lippmann, _Botticellis Zeichnungen zu Dantes Gottlicher Komodie_; Dr
Karl Woermann, "Sandro Botticelli" (in Dohme, _Kunst u. Kunstler_); Dr
Hermann Ulmann, _Sandro Botticelli_; Dr E. Steinmann, _Sandro
Botticelli_ (in Knackfuss series, valuable for the author's
elucidation of the Sixtine frescoes); I.B. Supino, _S