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
Portrait of a Young Woman (Botticelli, Frankfurt) similar Botticelli paintings are to be found in the National Gallery, London, the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and in the Marubeni Collection, Tokyo. David Alan Brown of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. describes the painting as of an ideally beautiful young woman mythologised as a nymph or goddess, a view reflected in the title given it by the Städel. It belongs to a group of such paintings by Botticelli or his workshop. The art historian Aby Warburg first suggested the painting was an idealised portrait of Simonetta Vespucci. It is suggested that Quattrocento paintings of hair and water are