Sandro Botticelli
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Portrait of a Young Woman by Sandro Botticelli, 1485
I couldn't dig up much on this one — no name for her, nothing about why it was painted. If anyone knows, I'd take the story.
Erisava: Is this the whole painting or a detail? Either way it works fine.
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Venus and Mars by Sandro Botticelli, 1485
The long, low shape is the giveaway, apparently: pictures built this wide were often part of the furniture — a bench back, or the panel set above a bed — rather than something hung by itself. There are wasps up in one corner that some people read as a pun on a family's name.
Erisava: Not one hair is out of place here, including on the one who's asleep.
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The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, 1485
It's painted on canvas rather than a wooden panel, which was still an odd choice at the time, and it seems to have been made for a Medici cousin's country house rather than a church. Who exactly ordered it, and what for, nobody seems to have settled.
Erisava: Everyone here's so pale and smooth they don't look like they'd weigh anything.
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Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici by Sandro Botticelli, 1479
Apparently this was painted after he was already dead — he was stabbed at Mass in 1478 as part of a plot against his family, and pictures like this got made afterward so people had something to remember him by.
Erisava: Why does he have his eyes closed like that?
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Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli, 1475
The man who paid for this was, from what I've read, a broker who wanted everyone to know how close he stood to the Medici — so a good number of the faces crowding in are theirs, painted in as kings and hangers-on. It went up on a church wall, which is a very polite place to put an advert for yourself.
Erisava: Too crowded for a holy scene. What did it cost to get your face in there?
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The Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli, 1450
This one's part of a set — seven small panels showing scenes from the life of Christ, according to the Met, though nobody's fully sure which church they were first painted for.
Erisava: Why do those columns stand right between the angel and Mary?
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Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli, 1482
Wikipedia says the Magi were basically local celebrities in Florence — there was a confraternity dedicated to them that restaged the wise men's journey through the city every five years. This one's thought to date from a stretch when the painter was actually in Rome, working on the Sistine Chapel at the same time, which is a strange thing to picture.
Erisava: The bottom looks like a green pond. Is that on purpose, or has it changed color over time?
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The Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Sandro Botticelli, 1495
Legend has it Saint Jerome asked for one last communion right before he died in his cell — it's not actually in the Bible, from what I can tell, just a story that stuck around for centuries.
Erisava: This looks like a full church service, not a deathbed. Did they really move him?