ジュリアーノ・デ・メディチの肖像

On the 26th of April 1478, during High Mass in Florence cathedral, assassins from the rival Pazzi family fell on the two Medici brothers. Lorenzo fought clear with a wound to the neck. His younger brother Giuliano did not; he was stabbed to death on the church floor. Botticelli painted this portrait soon afterward, almost certainly as a memorial rather than from a living sitter. Look for the signs of it. Giuliano's eyes are lowered, the window behind him stands half open, and a turtledove perches on a bare, dead branch, all long-understood emblems of a life cut short. Several such portraits were made at once and shown in public, both to mourn him and to warn off anyone tempted to follow the Pazzi.