Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici

On a Sunday in April 1478, as mass was said in Florence cathedral, assassins from the rival Pazzi family stabbed Giuliano de' Medici to death at the altar and wounded his brother Lorenzo, who escaped. This portrait was almost certainly made after that morning. Giuliano's eyes are lowered, his head tilts down, and the details around him read as mourning: a turtledove, a bird of grief, perches on a bare dead branch, and a shutter behind him stands half open. Botticelli seems to have worked from a death mask. Lorenzo, now sole ruler of Florence, wanted his murdered brother's face kept before the city, and several versions of this image survive.