Retable de Sant'Ambrogio

This is one of the first large commissions Botticelli ever received, painted around 1470 when he was still a young man making his name in Florence. It gathers the enthroned Virgin and Child with six saints in the calm, wordless grouping Italians called a sacra conversazione. Two of them kneel at the front, Cosmas and Damian, the doctor-saints the Medici had taken as their family protectors, which is no small thing in Medici-ruled Florence. Scholars have long suspected the pair carry the features of real Medici men, with Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano among the names put forward.