Retrato de Giuliano de' Medici

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.