414 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. XVIII. CHAPTER XVIII. SANDRO BOTTICELLI. Amongst the spectators of the martyrdom of S. Peter painted by Filippino Lippi in the Brancacci chapel, one on the right is a sullen and sensual looking man in profile, whose head is remarkable for the salience of the nose, the deep set of the eye under the pent-house of the brow, the heaviness of the underjaw and the size of a large and fleshy mouth. A purple cap covers copious long flow ing locks, a red mantle envelops the form; and the legs are encased in green hose.' This, according to Vasari, is the portrait of Sandro Botticelli, the cotemporary of Do menico Ghirlandaio, Benozzo, Verrocchio and Pietro Peru- gino, an artist who developed at various periods of his career the semi-religious, semi-fanciful feeling of Fra Filippo and the more realistic character of the Pollaiuoli and Verrocchio, and a vehement and passionate manner of his own at last, in which he combined power with fantas tic exuberance of thought. Born in 1447, he was the youngest son of Mariano Fi lip epi of Florence, 1 who apprenticed him to a goldsmith. 8 But his inclination favoured the study of painting, and Fra Filippo Lippi seems to have been the first artist upon whom he chose to model his style. No painter of the fif teenth century illustrates better than Botticelli the various changes which the art of the time had successfully under gone. Coming into the world when Angelico tottered on the brink of the grave, he saw Fra Filippo modify the 1 Uaye, Carteggio. Vol. I. p.p. 343—4. 8 Vas. Vol. V. p. 110.
