The Birth of Venus, Primavera, The Adoration of the Magi.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, commonly known as Sandro Botticelli, created some of the most beautiful pieces of art the world has ever seen.

Born into a period of greatness for Florentine art he flourished under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Art historian Robert Henry Hobart Cust's concise work uncovers the depth of Botticelli’s work.

Cust provides an overview of Botticelli’s life in the context of Lorenzo de Medici’s patronage, Dante Alighieri’s friendship, Michelangelo’s competition and Girolamo Savonarola’s revolutionary sermons.

But mostly the weight of this study is placed on Botticelli’s art; how his invention demonstrates itself, how his conception of the figure is demonstrated and how he created some of the most interesting paintings of the early Renaissance.

Where possible art referenced in the work have been linked to and are visible as high definition images for anyone with an eReader with web browsing capabilities.

Robert Henry Hobart Cust (1861-1940) was an art historian of the Italian Renaissance and Sienna. After attending Eton, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and Magdalen College Oxford he published his first major work on Il Sodoma, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. In subsequent years, Cust had to fend off reviewers who found - as Cust did himself - Sodoma's subject matter and lifestyle immoral. After writing books on Botticelli and Da Vinci he issued his own translation of an abbreviated version of the life of Benvenuto Cellini, based on a newer edition of the Italian. He served in the RAF during World War I.

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