Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, was born in Florence between 1444 and 1446. He lived on Borgo Ognissanti street for his entire life alongside his brothers Giovanni and Simone.
Giorgio Vasari reported that Botticelli was initially trained as a goldsmith while still in school in February 1458. From around 1461 or 1462, he apprenticed under Fra Filippo Lippi, one of the leading Florentine painters and a favorite of the Medici.
In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Sandro Botticelli to fresco the walls of the newly completed Sistine Chapel. He contributed three of the original fourteen large scenes: the Temptations of Christ, Youth of Moses, and Punishment of the Sons of Corah.
According to Giorgio Vasari, Sandro Botticelli became a follower of deeply moralistic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola who preached in Florence from 1490 until execution in 1498. This influence caused him to give up painting and fall into considerable distress as he had no other source of income.
His only dated painting, The Mystical Nativity, comes from late 1500 eighteen months after Savonarola died. Later work especially four panels with Scenes from Life of Saint Zenobius witnessed diminution of scale expressively distorted figures and non-naturalistic color reminiscent of Fra Angelico nearly century earlier.