Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph)

Botticelli painted this idealized profile in Florence around 1480, in the years he was also making the Primavera and the Birth of Venus for the Medici circle. The woman is turned to the side like a face on an ancient coin, her hair braided and threaded with pearls into an elaborate invention no real Florentine wore to dinner. She is often called Simonetta Vespucci, a Genoese beauty the city adored, though that name was attached to the picture centuries later by a scholar rather than by Botticelli, and Simonetta had in fact died young in 1476, before this was painted. So she is less a portrait than an idea of perfect beauty dressed as a nymph. The pearls and the jewel at her throat catch what little light Botticelli lets into the plain dark background.