Francesco Botticini (Francesco di Giovanni di Domenico), Florentine painter. The son of a painter of playing cards, Botticini was apprenticed in 1459 to the successful Florentine painter Bicci di Neri. From 1471 he was a meber of the Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael at Santo Spirito, and in 1472 he was inscribed in the Confraternity of St Luke.
His style consists almost entirely of elements drawn from his more illustrious contemporaries - Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Andrea del Verrocchio. He painted one remarkable work, however, the Assumption of the Virgin (National GalleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen)., London, c. 1474), which has the distinction of being the only picture from the QuattrocentoGLOSSARYThe 15th century in Italian art. The term is often used of the new style of art that was characteristic of the Early Renaissance, in particular works by Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Fra Angelico and others. It was preceded by the Trecento and followed by the Cinquecento. known to have been painted to illustrate a heresyGLOSSARYThe heretical movements affecting Italy between the mid-12th and the mid-14th century had their main impact in an area covering the north-west of the peninsula and southern France: it is not possible to speak of distinct Italian and meridional French movements. The authentically Christian movements which were expelled from the Catholic Church must in the first instance be distinguished from Catharism, which represented an infiltration by the originally non-Christian dualist system of Manichaeanism; from the start, the Cathars were an anti-church. By contrast, the Waldensian, Spiritual and Joachimite movements appeared initially as vital manifestations of Catholicism; only after their condemnation by the ecclesiastical authorities do they seem to have developed notably eccentric doctrines and to have described themselves as the true Church in opposition to the institutional Church; they had a recognizable kinship with movements that remained within the pale of orthodoxy. These Christian heresies had in common an attachment to the ideal of apostolic poverty, which came to be seen by the ecclesiastical authorities as a challenge to the institutionalized Church. The Waldensians or Valdesi (not to be confused with Valdesiani, the followers of Juan de Valdes, d. 1541) took their origin from the Poor Men of Lyons, founded by Peter Valdes or Waldo in the 1170s. They were distinguished by a strong attachment to the Bible and a desire to imitate Christ's poverty. At first approved by the Papacy as an order of laymen, they were condemned in 1184. Likewise condemned was the rather similar Lombard movement of the Humiliati. One stream of these remained as an approved order within the Catholic Church, while others merged with the Waldensians. The Waldensians came to teach that the sacraments could be administered validly only by the pure, i.e: only by Waldensian superiors or perfecti practising evangelical poverty. Alone among the heretical sects existing in Italy they were organized as a church, and regarded themselves as forming, together with brethren north of the Alps, one great missionary community. They spread all over western and central Europe but in the long term they came to be largely confined to the Rhaetian and Cottian Alps (the Grisons and Savoy). The Italian Waldensians in the 16th century resisted absorption by Reformed Protestantism. The early Franciscans might be regarded as a movement, similar in character to the Poor Men of Lyons, which was won for the cause of Catholic orthodoxy. However, divisions within the order over the issue of poverty led to religious dissidence. The Spirituals held up the ideal of strict poverty as obligatory for Franciscans and, indeed, normative for churchmen; following the Papacy's recognition of the Franciscan order as a property-owning body in 1322-23, their position became one of criticism of the institutional Church as such. Their heresies came to incorporate the millenarian doctrines of the 12th century abbot Joachim of Fiore. He had prophesied a coming age of the Holy Spirit ushered in by Spiritual monks; his heretical followers prophesied a new Spiritual gospel that would supersede the Bible. Joachimite Spiritualists came to see the pope, head of the 'carnal Church', as Antichrist. The main impact of the movement upon the laity was in southern France; in Italy it was an affair of various groups of fraticelli de paupere vita (little friars of the poor life), mainly in the south.. The donorGLOSSARYa patron who commissioned a work of art for a church. Donors sometimes had their portraits included in the work they were donating as a sign of piety., Matteo Palmieri, believed that human souls are the angels who stayed neutral when Satan rebelled against God.
