The
Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475-1476, now at the Uffizi) contains the portraits of
Cosimo de' Medici ("the finest of all that are now extant for its life and vigour"), his grandson
Giuliano de' Medici, and Cosimo's son
Giovanni. The quality of the scene was hailed by Vasari as one of Botticelli's pinnacles.
In
1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine and Umbrian artists to fresco the walls of the
Sistine Chapel. The iconological program was the supremacy of the Papacy. Sandro's contribution was moderately successful.
He returned to Florence, and "being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there wrote a commentary on a portion of
Dante and illustrated the
Inferno which he printed, spending much time over it, and this abstension from work led to serious disorders in his living." Thus Vasari characterized the first printed
Dante (1481) with Botticelli's decorations; he could not imagine that the new art of
printing might occupy an artist.
In the mid-1480s Botticelli worked on a major fresco cycle with
Perugino, Ghirlandaio, and
Filippino Lippi, for
Lorenzo the Magnificent's villa near
Volterra; in addition he painted many frescoes in Florentine churches.
In 1491 Botticelli served on a committee to decide upon a facade for the Florence
Duomo. In 1502 he was accused of sodomy, though charges were later dropped. In 1504 he was a member of the committee appointed to decide where
Michelangelo's David would be placed. His later work, especially as seen in a series on the life of
St. Zenobius, witnessed a diminution of scale, expressively distorted figures, and a non-naturalistic use of color reminiscent of the work of
Fra Angelico nearly a century earlier.
