Bildnis eines Mannes mit einer Medaille Cosimos des Älteren

Look at what the young man is holding out toward you. It is a medal stamped with the face of Cosimo de' Medici, the banker who effectively ran Florence, minted in bronze a few years before Botticelli painted this around 1474. And it is not painted at all. Botticelli set an actual cast of gilded plaster into the panel, so the object in the portrait is a real thing you could once have touched. The Medici were the power behind the city, and to hold their founder's likeness was to declare where you stood. Who the sitter is has never been settled. One idea is that he was among the craftsmen who made and gilded such medals, which would explain why he presents it so carefully. Botticelli here does something new for Italian portraiture, bringing the hands right into the picture instead of showing only a face.