Botticelli (game) Botticelli (game) Botticelli is a guessing game which requires the players to have a good knowledge of biographical details of famous people. The game has several variants, but the common theme is that one person or team thinks of a famous person, reveals their initial letter, and then answers yes/no questions to allow other players to guess the identity. The game takes its name from the famous person having to be at least as famous as Sandro Botticelli, who is also the answer to the archetypal question, "Did you paint a picture of Venus rising?", referring to his painting "The
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder resembles this. He is also sometimes claimed to be the subject of other Botticelli portraits, with completely different features (e.g. Pitti Palace, wearing a chaperon). The appearance at auction in 1982, from the Thomas Merton collection, of a rarely seen painting by Botticelli of a young man identified (with no real evidence) as Giovanni il Popolano in a similar pose, holding up a round medallion cut from a much older painting (albeit of a bearded saint, not Cosimo), has led to speculation that this might be a companion piece, and thus that the young man in this portrait is possibly