Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci the age of 23. Sandro Botticelli was inspired by her features in "The Birth of Venus" and Piero di Cosimo was a passionate admirer. The subject is a young girl portrayed at half length in profile, facing left. Her breasts are bared and a small snake twines around the necklace she is wearing. In the background is an open landscape, arid on the left and lush on the right. The dark clouds are a symbol of her early death, as is the dead tree in the background. At the base of the painting is a border with an inscription that
Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) or two earlier. <BR> Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) The Madonna and Child with Two Angels is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, dating to c. 1468-1469. It is now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, in Naples. The work was once attributed to Filippino Lippi, master of Botticelli. The composition essentially derives from Botticelli's master (and Filippino Lippi's father) Filippo Lippi. The faces and other details suggest around the same period of the "Fortitude" and the other juvenile Madonnas of the Italian painter. The composition is similar to Verrocchio's "Madonna of the Milk", probably