(Sandro, or Alessandro), born at Florence in 1437, learned the rudiments of painting under Filippo Lippi. He executed several pictures for pope Sixtus IV. and others for the city of Florence: for these he received large sums of money, all of which he expended, and died at last in great distress, aged 78. He was not only a painter, but a man of letters. Baldini, according to the general report, communicated to him the secret of engraving, then newly discovered by Finiguerra their townsmen. The famous edition of Dante's Poem of Hell, printed at Florence by Nicholo Lorenzo della Magna, A.D. 1481, and to which, according to some authors, Botticelli undertook to write notes, was evidently intended to have been ornamented with prints, one for each canto; and these prints (as many of them as were finished) were designed, if not engraved, by Botticelli. It is remarkable, that the two first plates only were printed upon the leaves of the book, and for want of a blank space at the head of the first canto, the plate belonging to it is placed at the bottom of the page. Blank spaces are left for all the rest; that as many of them as were finished might be pasted on. Mr Wilbraham possesses the finest copy of this book extant, in any private library; and the number of prints in it amounts to nineteen. The two first, as usual, are printed on the leaves; and the other seventeen, which follow regularly, are pasted on the blank spaces. And these apparently were all that Botticelli ever executed. About the year 1460, it is said, that he engraved a set of plates, representing the Prophets and Sibyls. Bafan tells us that he marked these plates with a monogram composed of an A and a B joined together.