Sandro Botticelli

📍Borgo Ognissanti, 50123 Florence, Italy

“I was born in Florence in the 1440s in a house on Borgo Ognissanti, the street that runs west along the river towards the church of All Saints. My father, Mariano Filipepi, was a tanner, and I was the youngest of the children who survived. Ours was a working district of craftsmen, wool workers and merchants, close to the Arno, and the name I am known by, Botticelli, came from the family nickname for a little barrel. I hardly ever left this neighbourhood. In 1464 my father bought a house nearby on Via Nuova, and I took it over in 1470 and lived and worked there for the rest of my life. The Vespucci family were our neighbours; the notary Nastagio Vespucci and his relatives commissioned work from me, and their kinsman Amerigo, whose name would one day be given to the Americas, grew up in the same streets. It was a community where patronage often began with a conversation across the road. The church of Ognissanti was our parish, and I painted Saint Augustine in his study for it, set facing the work of my contemporary Ghirlandaio. From these streets I went on to the Medici circle, to the Sistine Chapel walls in Rome, and to the mythologies that became The Birth of Venus and Primavera. Yet I always came back to the same few streets by the river. I rest in Ognissanti, among the families I had known all my life, and the painting I made for my parish church still hangs there.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Sandro Botticelli Wikipedia: Ognissanti,_Florence Wikipedia: Saint Augustine in His Study (Botticelli,_Ognissanti) lovefromtuscany.com