Allegory of Abundance

This is a drawing, not a painting, and one of only about 30 that survive from Botticelli's own hand. He made it around 1480, the same years he was at work on the Primavera and the Birth of Venus in Florence. A woman strides forward with a cornucopia spilling flowers and fruit, a small child running at her side, either Abundance or Autumn. Botticelli drew her in pen and brown ink, then washed in the shadow and lifted the highlights in white, working out the folds of her gown with the same flowing line you see in his famous paintings. He never finished it. The horn of plenty and some of the children beside her are still only charcoal, left where he set down the pen.