Portrait of a Young Man

Around 1482 Botticelli was back in Florence after a spell in Rome, where he had painted three large frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel for the pope. Portraits like this one were his bread-and-butter work between the big mythologies. The young man is turned slightly, set against a plain dark ground so nothing competes with the face, and his features are softened in the way Botticelli favoured for the living as much as for his goddesses. We do not know who he was. No name, no coat of arms, no inscription came down with the panel, which is why it still carries a plain descriptive title, the one it kept when it entered an American collection in the 20th century.