e time it acquired so great a fame for Sandro
that Pope Sixtus IV. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the
chapel he had built in Rome."

The visit to Rome was in 1481, and meantime Botticelli had produced the
wayward _Primavera_, and the more stern and harsh _S. Augustine_ in the
church of Ognissanti. Of his frescoes in the Pope's chapel nearly all
have survived, including _Moses slaying the Egyptian_, _The Temptation_,
and _The Destruction of Korah's Company_, besides such of the heads of
the Popes as were not painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his other
assistants in the work.

Returning to Florence in 1482, he was for twenty years without a rival
in the city--after the departure of Leonardo to Milan--and he appears to
have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed
the immense forces within him. Before 1492 may be dated the two examples
in the National Gallery, the _Portrait of a Youth_ and the fascinating
_Mars and Venus_, which was probably intended as a decoration for some
large piece of furniture. The beautiful and extraordinarily life-like
frescoes in the Louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that
Gallery) from the Villa Lemmi, representing Giovanna Tornabuoni with
Venus and the Graces, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni with the Liberal Arts, are
assigned to 1486. Of this period are also the more familiar _Birth of
Venus_; _The Tondo of the Pomegranate_ and the _Annunciation_ in the
Uffizi, and the San Marco altar-piece, the _Coronation of the Virgin_
in the Florence Academy.

To the influence of Savonarola, however great or little that may have
been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. Professor Muther
characterises Botticelli as "the Jeremiah of the Renaissance," but
whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to
impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous _Calumny of
Apelles_, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."[1]

This is the latest of Sandro's works which are in public galleries, and
there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very
productive. "This master is said to have had an extraordinary love for
those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," Vasari tells us, "and
is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad
manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become
old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go