500th Anniversary of the Death of Sandro Botticelli

A detail from the oil painting Primavera (1482) by Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510); the state inscription "SAN MARINO", the year 2010, the initial of designer Roberto Mauri and the "R" mintmark.

Sandro Botticelli is among the most significant painters of the early Italian Renaissance, although his work fell into long obscurity after his death and was only rediscovered in the 19th century by the Pre-Raphaelites. Born around 1445 in Florence, he worked under the patronage of the Medici and created for them his best-known works: Primavera (around 1482) and The Birth of Venus (around 1484-1486), both now held in the Uffizi. These paintings combine Neoplatonic thought with a distinctive linear aesthetic - the flowing garments, the ethereal faces and the densely interwoven composition made Botticelli one of the most stylistically distinctive masters of his time.

In his late work, Botticelli turned increasingly to religious and apocalyptic themes, influenced by the penitential preacher Girolamo Savonarola. He died in 1510 in Florence, a few years after his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci. San Marino, a small state culturally and historically closely tied to the Italian Renaissance, dedicated a 2-euro commemorative coin to Botticelli in 2010 on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death. The chosen motif from Primavera points to a key work of Renaissance iconography that remains among the most reproduced and most analysed paintings in Western art history.