One feels that he too felt the emotion that his characters display; he did not merely paint, he thought and suffered.

Hence his work is dramatic.

Again Botticelli had far wider sympathies than most of his contemporaries.

He was a friend of the Medici, a neo-Platonist, a student of theology with the poet Palmieri, an illustrator of Dante, and a devoted follower of Savonarola.

Of the part that women played in his life we know nothing: in fact we know less of him intimately than of almost any of the great painters; but this we may guess, that he was never a happy man.