#FineArtFriday: Portrait of a Lady by the workshop of Sandro Botticelli ca. 1480

Artist: Workshop of Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510)
Title: Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph)
Genre: portrait
Date: circa 1480
Medium: tempera on wood
Dimensions: Height: 82 cm (32.2 ″); Width: 54 cm (21.2 ″)

About Portrait of a young woman, possibly Simonetta Vespucci, 1484:

The Roman engraved gem on her necklace was owned by Lorenzo de’ Medici. It is suggested that in Quatrocento paintings, hair and water are related. Certainly, the waves of her hair seem to suggest water.

Ronald Lightbown, author of Botticelli: Life and Works claims it is a creation of Botticelli’s workshop and was likely neither drawn nor painted exclusively by Botticelli himself. He also reminds us that the model’s identity can’t be confirmed; that Botticell’s workshop most likely executed fancy portraits of idealized beauties, rather than real ladies.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445^[1] – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (/ˌbɒtɪˈtʃɛli/, Italian: [ˈsandro bottiˈtʃɛlli]), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his Vita of Botticelli as a “golden age“. Botticelli’s posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting