Editing Sandro Botticelli (section)

==Personal life==
===Finances===
According to Vasari's perhaps unreliable account, Botticelli "earned a great deal of money, but wasted it all through carelessness and lack of management".<ref name="auto2"/> He continued to live in the family house all his life, also having his studio there. On his father's death in 1482 it was inherited by his brother Giovanni, who had a large family. By the end of his life it was owned by his nephews. From the 1490s he had a modest country villa and farm at Bellosguardo (now swallowed up by the city), which was leased with his brother Simone.<ref>Ettlingers, 12–14.</ref>

===Sexuality===
Botticelli never married, and apparently expressed a strong dislike of the idea of marriage. An anecdote records that his patron Tommaso Soderini, who died in 1485, suggested he marry, to which Botticelli replied that a few days before he had dreamed that he had married, woke up "struck with grief", and for the rest of the night walked the streets to avoid the dream resuming if he slept again. The story concludes cryptically that Soderini understood "that he was not fit ground for planting vines".<ref>Lightbown, 44.</ref>

He might have had a close relationship with [[Simonetta Vespucci]] (1453–1476), who has been claimed, especially by [[John Ruskin]], to be portrayed in several of his works and to have served as the inspiration for many of the female figures in the artist's paintings. It is possible that he was at least platonically in love with Simonetta, given his request to have himself buried at the foot of her tomb in the [[Ognissanti, Florence|Ognissanti]]{{snd}} the church of the Vespucci{{snd}} in Florence, although this was also Botticelli's church, where he had been baptized. When he died in 1510, his remains were placed as he requested.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.finearttouch.com/The_Art_of_Botticelli_The_Face_That_Launched_A_Thousand_Prints.html |title=The Face That Launched a Thousand Prints |first=Brenda |last=Harness |access-date=10 August 2009 |work=Fine Art Touch |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215402/http://www.finearttouch.com/The_Art_of_Botticelli_The_Face_That_Launched_A_Thousand_Prints.html |url-status=live }}.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America |last=Fernandez-Armesto |first=Felipe |author-link=Felipe Fernandez-Armesto |year=2007 |publisher=[[Random House]] |isbn=978-1-4000-6281-2 |pages=231 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j9khjlWQPWUC |access-date=September 13, 2020 |archive-date=December 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201207231306/https://books.google.com/books?id=j9khjlWQPWUC |url-status=live }}.</ref>

In 1938, [[Jacques Mesnil]] discovered a summary of a charge in the Florentine Archives for November 16, 1502, which read simply "Botticelli keeps a boy", an accusation of [[sodomy]] (homosexuality). No prosecution was brought. The painter would then have been about fifty-eight. Mesnil dismissed it as a customary slander by which partisans and adversaries of [[Savonarola]] abused each other. Opinion remains divided on whether this is evidence of homosexuality.<ref>Louis Crompton, ''Homosexuality and Civilization'', Harvard University, 2003.</ref> Many have backed Mesnil.<ref>Michael Rocke, ''Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence'', Oxford University Press, 1996, {{ISBN|978-0-19-506975-4}}; Lightbown, 302.</ref> Art historian Scott Nethersole has suggested that a quarter of Florentine men were the subject of similar accusations, which "seems to have been a standard way of getting at people"<ref>Scott Nethersole ([[Courtauld Institute]]), quoted in Hudson.</ref> but others have cautioned against hasty dismissal of the charge.<ref>Andre Chastel, ''Art et humanisme a Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique'', Presses Universitaires de France, 1959.</ref> Mesnil nevertheless concluded "woman was not the only object of his love".<ref>Jacques Mesnil, ''Botticelli'', Paris, 1938.</ref>

The Renaissance art historian, James Saslow, has noted that: "His [Botticelli's] homo-erotic sensibility surfaces mainly in religious works where he imbued such nude young saints as Sebastian with the same androgynous grace and implicit physicality as Donatello's David".<ref>James Saslow, ''Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in art and society'', Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986, 88.</ref>