The Resurrected Christ

Around 1480, Sandro Botticelli was one of the busiest painters in Florence, and within a year he'd be summoned to Rome to work on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. This little panel comes from the quieter side of that career. It was made for private prayer rather than a public chapel, small enough to keep close in a room at home. It shows the risen Christ as a frontal bust against a dark ground, the crown of thorns still on his head, looking straight out at whoever stands before it. The scale is really the point. At a bit over 45 centimetres tall, it asks to be met one to one, an arm's length away, the way its first owner would have prayed to it.