Retrato de Giuliano de' Medici

On the 26th of April 1478, during Mass in the cathedral of Florence, assassins fell on the two Medici brothers. Lorenzo fought his way clear. Giuliano, his younger brother, was stabbed to death on the church floor, the Pazzi conspiracy at its bloody climax. This portrait of him was likely begun just before that day, and finished after it. Look at the signs Botticelli threaded through it. Giuliano's eyes are lowered almost shut, his head tilts down, and scholars think the face may have been completed from a death mask. Behind him a window stands half open and a turtledove perches on a bare, broken branch, both old emblems of a life cut off. Botticelli painted several versions of this young man in the years right after his murder, keeping the murdered Medici's face in view while Lorenzo took his revenge on the city.