Detail, The birth of Venus, c 1484, Tempera on wood.  Ufizzi Gallery Florence

Detail, Primavera, c 1482, Grease tempera on wood.  Ufizzi Gallery Florence

Madonna and Child with an Angel
1470, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston


Scan courtesty of Web Gallery of Art

This painting shows the synthesis of trends that formed the style of Botticelli's painting. The figure of the Christ Child reaches from his mother's lap to bless the bunch of grapes and stalks of grain held out to him by the angel, symbolizing the sacrament of the Eucharist (the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ), in a more explicit manner than the traditional one of the pomegranate used by the Florentine painters of the early fifteenth century.

Once again there is the influence of Lippi and Verrocchio in this painting, most notably in the landscape and background of the scene.

(Text from Web Gallery of Art)