Portrait of a Young Woman in Mythological Guise, c.1480s. 81.8 x 54 cm. Tempera on wood. Städelsches Kunstintitut, Frankfurt. A three-quarter length portrait, the most popular format in Florence. Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). Sandro Botticelli, widely known for some art history’s greatest masterworks, was one of the top masters during the Quattrocento in Florence. His fine and delicate touches had got much to do with his previous training as a goldsmith.
Portraiture was a flourishing business in the Florence of the Quattrocento. Most rulers and influential merchants all wanted to have the portraits of their wives, and lovers as permanent mementos of their –sometimes, though not always– platonic love, as part and parcel of the true chivalric code in use at this period of in western Europe, and that was a continuing tradition within the boundaries of medieval courtly romance, enjoyed by princes and aristocrats alike.
Art historians usually agree in thinking that this is a representation of the noblewoman Simonetta Vespucci, who is depicted in an idealized or symbolic manner (a goddess, perhaps a classic nymph?), following the chivalric code of platonic love of the Renaissance.
Attention has been called by scholars to the similarity of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to draw comparison between this presumed Simonetta Vespucci and the Venus goddess (same hazel eyes, wavy, golden-brown hair, and quite similar nasal features). The woman appears dress in a luxuriant classicizing dress, perhaps representing someone mythological, or simply an idealized representation of Beauty as was understood by both contemporary artists and men during this period.
She wears a medallion (a famous antique carnelian representing Apollo and Marsyas, which belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici) and a pearl net in her hair (a vespaio) which has led pundits to think of the relationship with Lorenzo’s young brother, Giuliano who felt a passionate devotion to Simonetta Cattaneo, known as Vespucci. Her tragic untimely death was the cause of deeply felt sorrow and a spate of written odes in her honour (Poliziano, and other of the Medici milieu). A superb masterpiece of all Renaissance portraiture.