Botticelli

Oh dear, how on earth can a terrible speller ever learn to spell Botticelli!

Sheesh, I have had the hardest time this month trying to spell his name correctly every time we put in on the time line and do a google search.

The kids have chosen their favorite works from this site with what it claims are his complete works, Botticelli.net   there are several repeats, and quite frequently 'detail' photos that are nearly identical, still nice to be able to see so much of his work all on one page.

Dude is especially fond of  The Story of Lucretia, 'look there are paintings in the painting!' while Princess favors  The Return of Judith because she thought it was about the Milkmaid (from Aesop), she likes it slightly less now that we have read the story of Judith.  Little Man prefers   The Adoration of the Magi, which caused some trouble as we couldn't find that particular version attributed to Botticelli on any other websites.  Either the .net site is wrong, or it is a lesser known work (possibly an earlier version?). We are still researching, at the least the kids are learning not to take everything you read on the internet at face value!

Personally I like the Birth of Venus, because Venus kinda looks like me, especially when viewed on a website that for whatever reason has the hair tinted red.

We also borrowed this book from the library.  It has a nice overview of his life, with many photos of his works.  The kids were especially fond of learning 'Botticello means 'little barrel', the nickname given to his older brother.  Though based on his possible self portrait he doesn't look much like a barrel!  I am curious what the ending 'i' means in Italian.