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 of the Book Madonna of the Book The Madonna of the Book, or the Madonna del Libro, is a small painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, and is preserved in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. The painting is executed in tempera on panel. It dates from between 1480 and 1483. The "Madonna of the Book" is a soft and elegant work, in which Mary and the Child are seated by a window in the corner of a room. She holds a Book of Hours, the Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, prayer books for laymen common in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.