Description
This Renaissance jewel is one of Botticelli's finest portraits.
The piece features a bust-length portrait of a noble model, believed by scholars to be made in the image of a member of the Medici family. In the current work, Botticelli's young nobleman holds a circle depicting a saint, painted after the work of the Sienese artist Bartolommeo Bulgarini. Experts believe that the work may have been made to order.
The Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion is the pictorial synthesis of the ideals of the Renaissance. The magic and beauty of Renaissance Florence where, for the first time since ancient times, the individual and the human figure were at the center of both life and art, and would come to define our understanding of humanism as we know it. today. Botticelli was at the forefront of this movement, and his revolutionary style made him one of the first artists to abandon the tradition of depicting models in profile. Yet for all that the Florentine Renaissance embodies, the painting is timelessly modern in its sheer simplicity, striking colors, and graphic linearity.