若い男の肖像

Around 1470, Florentine portraits still mostly showed a sitter in strict profile, the way a face turns up on a coin, dignified and out of reach. This young man turns almost to face us. His body angles one way and his eyes come back to meet ours, and he sits a little above our line of sight, as if we caught him mid-turn. It is one of the earliest three-quarter portraits in Western painting, and the first securely given to Botticelli's own hand. We don't know who he is. There is no name and no coat of arms, just a plain dark cap against a plainer background. The panel has always read dark, and stayed dark even after a cleaning in 1935 brought up the rest.