Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Trecento Medallion Author(s): Richard Stapleford Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol.

129, No. 1012 (Jul., 1987), pp. 428-436 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/882920 . Accessed: 14/09/2013 11:21
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RICHARD STAPLEFORD

Botticelli's

portrait
trecento

of

young medallion

man

holding

IN December 1982 the portrait of a young man holding a trecento medallion (Fig. 1) was sold by Christie's in London to an American collector. The attribution to Botticelli has been questioned by a number of critics and, in spite of its unusual features, the painting has never been carefully discussed in the context of other Florentine portraits. The transfer of ownership and recent cleaning* have provided the opportunity to re-examine the painting to clarify its meaning and to determine, if possible, its authorship. The painting is first recorded in 1938 in the collection of Lord Newborough of Caernarvon, Wales. The first Lord Newborough, then Sir Thomas Winn, had stayed in Florence from 1782 until 1791 and on his return to Britain may have brought the portrait back with him. It has been suggested that the painting had been a gift to him from the Grand Duke of Florence on the occasion of his marriage in Florence to Maria Stella Chiappini in 1786. The supposition is charming but improbable. At the time of their marriage Sir Thomas was fifty years old and Maria Stella was only twelve. She was the daughter of a lower-class police constable who had put her on stage at an early age, and Lord Newborough had apparently become infatuated with her after seeing her at a music hall. Even before his marriage Sir Thomas had alienated polite society in Florence and according to a letter from Sir Horace Mann, Foreign Minister at Florence, he had been living 'in a manner unsuited to his rank and wealth'.' The Grand Duke would hardly have been anxious, perhaps, to dignify such a union by giving a personal gift to the unlikely couple. The painting remained unknown to the outside world until 1938 when a London art dealer, visiting the Newborough estate on other business, happened to notice the portrait hanging in an anteroom of the house. It was modestly displayed and apparently not highly valued, for the dealer was able to persuade the owner to part with it for little money. The painting was subsequently sold to Sir Thomas Merton of Maidenhead, England, in whose collection it was for the first time published as by Botticelli.2 In December 1982 the portrait was sold to its present owner. Though the attribution to Botticelli has been doubted, close analysis of the painting verifies that it shares with accepted portraits by him the qualities of drawing and presence that set his works apart from those of his contemporaries and that it is, in fact, one of his finest portraits. The work, in tempera on panel, measures 58.7 by 39.7 cm and is in exceptionally good condition, owing partly to the fact that its back was gessoed to prevent the wood from

warping. The paint is well preserved with only a few touches of repaint, chiefly in the tunic. The portrait itself is of a young man, his shoulders turned three-quarters toward the picture plane, his head turned slightly more, displaying with two hands the round gold-ground trecento image of a bearded saint, and gazing intently at the viewer. The youth's dark-blonde shoulder-length hair is parted in the middle and cut so as to frame his face with shorter locks at the sides and a long mane to the nape of his neck. He is dressed in the simplest of tunics fastened in front with a row of closely set buttons matching the colour of the tunic and ending in a stiff collar topped with an edging of white shirt. The tunic is coloured a shade of mauve, a hue composed of equal parts of blue and red, subtly harmonising the cool greys and blues of the background, the warm reds, yellows, and golds of the medallion and the flesh tones of the boy's face. The figure is placed in front of a window frame defined as a simple series of colour planes, and behind a parapet seen as a light grey strip at the bottom of the picture. Two fingers of his left hand, while supporting the frame of the medallion, partly overlap this parapet establishing it as a solid repoussoirand increasing the illusionism of the medallion by making it seem pushed back into the space of the picture. The sequence of grey tones comprising the window frame provides another demonstration of the artist's manipulation of colour (Fig. 1). The grey band of the windowsurround which frames the boy's head, is painted in a uniform grey colour which, however, seems to change as it moves from left to right, appearing to be blue and lighter at the left and grey and darker at the right. This visual phenomenon is simply a result of the fact that a colour is perceived according to its environment, and the adjacent colours are darker at the left and lighter at the right. The artist has here illustrated the relativity of colour perception and shown that he is perfectly aware of what he is doing by continuing this centre grey strip across the top of the painting in an unbroken plane, demonstrating that the colour is in fact the same at right and left. Extensive pentimenti were revealed in the x-ray of the painting, particularly around the hair (Fig.2). The mass of hair was lengthened at the back on both sides of the neck, and the upward turning curls at the left of the face were added after the hair was largely completed. The left side are often adduced of the neck was also thickened. Pentimenti in other artists' work as proof of autograph rather than shop work. In this case, too little is known of Botticelli's

*The painting was cleaned by John Brealey of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 'See in SIRRALPHPAYNE-GALLWAY: The Mystery of Maria Stella Lady Newborough, London [1907]. Maria Stella, who came to believe that she was the true heir to the throne of France exchanged at birth for a peasant's son who subsequently became King, wrote an autobiography recording her eventful life: Maria Stella

ou ichange d'une demoiselledu plus haut rang contreun garfon de la conditionla plus vile, Paris [1830]. For bibliography concerning the claim and the controversy it HOWARD DEWALDEN, aroused see The CompletePeerage, H.A. DOUBLEDAY and LORD eds., Vol.IX, pp.508-11. 2A. SCHARF: A Catalogue of Pictures and Drawings from the Collection of Sir Thomas Merton, F.R.S. at StubbingsHouse, Maidenhead, London [1950], p. 14.

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1. Portrait a medallion, here attributed to Botticelli. 58.4 by 39.4 cm. (Private collection, New York). ofayoungmanholding

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2. X-radiograph of Fig. 1.

shop methods for thepentimentito constitute a confirmation of authenticity by themselves, although in conjunction with other evidence they do lend support to such a judgment.3 The most unusual feature of the painting is that the panel has been carefully prepared to receive a small round medallion of a saint 10.6 cm in diameter dating from the fourteenth century (Fig.3). The uniqueness of such a palimpsest has caused some critics to question its authenticy. Roberto Longhi, calling the combination 'un antistorico "nonsense"', declared that the trecento medallion must be a modern addition replacing a broken paste medallion.4 When the painting was placed on temporary display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York this spring the curators inexplicably asserted in the accompanying placard that the roundel 'is certainly a later addition and may replace a stucco relief'. The question as to whether the medallion and the panel have always been combined is not difficult to resolve, and the weight of evidence strongly favours the originality of the present arrangement. To begin with, the hollow en-

closing the medallion has been reamed into the surface of the panel to a depth exactly matching the thickness of the trecento fragment. The fit is so extraordinarily fine and the medallion so neatly conforms to the surface of the panel that a cursory examination almost persuades the viewer that it is a painted fabrication of a trecento work and not a separate piece. This exact coincidence of thickness and depth would have been all but impossible to achieve at a later time without damaging the panel around the edge of the hollow: in fact the original paint of the panel is intact all the way around the edge of the hollow." The medallion, on the other hand, having been cut down from an original rectangular trecento fragment, is extensively damaged and repaired around its edges. These repairs must have been made when the medallion was inserted into the panel. Magnified examination of the joint between the medallion and the panel reveals that flecks of the gold and red paint used in the restoration of the medallion can be detected beneath the original brown paint of the simulated frame. The conclusion is obvious: the restoration of the medallion's gold ground preceded the completion of the painting of the panel into which it had been set. Thus the medallion is original to the painting. The artist was particularly careful in the difficult carpentry required in joining the medallion and the panel. A hollow exactly matching the dimensions of the medallion was reamed out of the surface of the panel to a depth equal to the thickness of the medallion, and the earlier painting was then set, intarsia-style, into it. The adhesive used to fix the medallion is unknown - one would imagine an animal glue of casein with a low water content of the sort used by intarsia craftsmen - but the hollow seems to have been prepared by first spreading white lead into the cavity to seal the wood and create an impervious pocket for the older wooden piece.6 The x-ray clearly reveals the white lead completely filling the cavity beneath the medallion and bleeding into the splits exposed by the woodworker's gouge along the grain of the wood (Fig.2). White lead was probably used because it is a sealing agent and the artist realised that the different rates of shrinkage of the two pieces of wood comprising his collage, the newly prepared panel and the old tondo, required that they be isolated from each other. White lead has the added advantages of having adhesive properties and in thick solution it would have acted as a filling agent between the back of the trecento fragment and the gouged-out depression. The medallion was taken from a larger painting, perhaps a dismembered polyptych (Fig.3). The circular image of the saint was originally part of a rectangle, judging by the pattern of punch marks surrounding the bust, and was cut into a circle by the quattrocento artist to accommodate its new use in the portrait. Richard Offner suggested that the

3The Giulianode' Medici in Washington (Fig.8), for example, generally considered a shop collaboration, has pentimenti at the back of the collar and the right side of the neck. al tondino di Santo e che? unvero, autentico cheessetrattengono senese, 4'Quanto primitivo statoopportuno avvertire di unantistorico 'nonsense'ede pertanto . sarebbe chesi tratta da ritenersi inserimento recente circavent'annifa quando vidiil dipinto) (magialin essere un medaglione in pastiglia sbriciolato dal tempo'('Uno sguardo alle per sostituire fotografie della Mostra "Italian Art and Britain" alla Royal Academy di Londra', Paragone, Vol.XI, No.125 [May 1960], p.60). 5The single exception to this is at the lower edge of the simulated frame around

the inset (approximately between seven and eight o'clock on the circular face) where a section of original paint has been restored. But the damage must have been inflicted after the medallion was in place because the restorationcontinues across the joint and includes an equivalent section of the medallion and the frame. 61 am indebted to Paul Levy of Upbrook Studios in London and John Brealey of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for their technical expertise which they so generously shared with me in discussionsabout the painting. My thanks to Anthony Panzera for informationconcerning the technical properties of white lead.

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4. Head of an angel, from Madonna, Child and saints, by Bartolommeo

5. Tondo Portrait man,by FrancescoBotticini. (Royal Palace, Stockholm). of ayoung

Bulgarini. (Istituto di Restauro, formerlyOpera di S. Croce, Florence).

artist of the medallion was the Ovile Master,7 now generally agreed to be Bartolommeo Bulgarini (active c.1350-78), and his attribution is supported by a comparison of the extant works by Bulgarini with the medallion. Bulgarini's bust of an angel from the polyptych formerly in the Opera di S. Croce in Florence, for example, is very similar to the saint, in the structure and shadowing of the nose, the large-pupilled eyes glancing upward to the left, and the punch pattern defining the halo (Fig.4).8 The first publication of the portrait was in 1950 by Alfred Scharf in his catalogue of pictures from the collection of Sir Thomas Merton.9 He attributed the painting to Botticelli, citing its relationship to a portrait of a man by Botticelli formerly in the Filangieri Collection in Naples and to the portrait of the Youngman with a medalof Cosimo de'Medici in the Uffizi. It was exhibited as Botticelli in the Royal Academy in 1960. Roberto Longhi in his review of that exhibition, however, doubted the attribution to Botticelli, asserting that only the hands were worthy of him, and tentatively suggested Botticini as the artist. 10This suggestion was echoed more forcefully in 1968 by Everett Fahy, who rejected the Botticelli attribution and argued for a definite attribution to Botticini based on similarities to a portrait in Stockholm (Fig.5).11 Among the major

monographs on Botticelli published since 1950, Roberto Salvini in 1958 and Gabriele Mandel in 1967 both omit the painting entirely, even ignoring it in their categories of doubtful works.12 Ronald Lightbown does not consider the painting autograph and in his exhaustive 1978 monograph on Botticelli includes it only in his category of 'other paintings attributed to Botticelli or his school'. 13 Among those who supported the attribution to Botticelli was Sir Kenneth Clark who, after having seen the painting at Frank Sabin's gallery in 1941, praised it in a letter and asserted that he believed it to be a Botticelli: 'I am interested to know that you have sold the Botticelli, and agree with you in thinking it one of the finest fifteenth-century portraits I have ever seen on the market. Let me repeat (and you can show this letter to your client) that I have no doubt about its authenticity'.14 Susan Legouix's short monograph of 1977, alone among recent studies of the artist, places the portrait among the autograph works by Botticelli.15 Since no documents are likely to be discovered to solve the problem of authorship definitively, its resolution must for the moment rest on the analysis of style. In a comparison with other portraits commonly agreed to be by Botticelli the Youngman holding a medallionfinds a ready niche. The constant element in all his portraits is the vivid sense of

Winter Exhibition [1960],No.345,pp.127-28. ForBulgarini see MILLARD MEISS:

ItalianArt and Britain,Royal Academy of Arts, London, Catalogue: 7Exhibition

" 'Some Early Italian Picturesin the Gambier-Parry BURLINGTON Collection',THE

Vol.CIX [1967], pp.128-38. MAGAZINE, S 2R. SALVINI, Tutta la pittura del Botticelli, Milan [1958]; c. BO and G. MANDEL, L'Opera completadel Botticelli, Milan [1967]. ' R. LIGHTBOWN: Sandro Botticelli, London [1978], Vol.2, p.160. I am indebted

'Bartolommeo Bulgarini altrimenti detto "Ugolino Lorenzetti"', Rivistad'arte, Vol.XVIII [April-June 1936], pp.113-36: also idem:'Nuovi dipinti e vecchi Vol.30 [1955], pp. 107-45, esp. 130-35. Recent literature d'arte, problemi', Rivista is summarisedby c. ALESSI in II Gotico a Siena,exh.cat., Palazzo Pubblico (Siena, 24thJuly - 30th October 1982), Florence [1982], pp.250-51. 8My thanks to Prof. Michael Mallory of Brooklyn College, City University of New York, who was most helpful in discussionsabout the medallion. 90p.cit. at note 2 above, p.14. '0LONGHI, loc.cit.at note 4 above, p.61.

to Ronald Lightbown for his kindnessin discussing the painting at some length with me. '4Letterfrom Clarkto Frank Sabin, Esq., dated 28th May 1941, in the possession of the current ownersof the painting. London [1977], p.52. Botticelli, '5s. LEGOUIX:

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6. Portrait ofayoungman,by Botticelli. 37.5 by 28.2 cm. (National Gallery, London).

7. Portrait ofMicheleMarullo,by Botticelli. 49 by 35 cm. (Dofia Helena Camb6 de Guardans collection, Barcelona).

life, the investment of personality in the sitter. In this sense, however subjective the judgment, the young man in question ranks among the most striking fifteenth-century portraits. His hypnotic stare, his poise, the dialogue set up between the medallion 'held' and the painting, all contribute to a vivacity which is finally not objectively quantifiable but nonetheless undeniable. These qualities do not make the painting a Botticelli, but if it is not his work it must be the product of a painter of equivalent skill. Botticini has been suggested as such a painter, particularly on the basis of his tondo portrait of a young man in the Royal Palace at Stockholm (Fig.5).16 That painting, similar to the New York Youngmanin age, dress, pose, and general demeanour, provides an instructive comparison. Though the tondo is so close to the other portrait as to seem almost an imitation, in every particular it shows itself to have been painted according to a formula, and the final effect is devoid of the spontaneity and liveliness of the medallion portrait. The head of the Stockholm young man, for example, is attached clumsily to the neck and bears little or no structural relationship to the torso, while the shoulders, drawn as if turned at an angle to the picture plane (note the arrangement of the sleeves), are painted and centred so as to suggest they are seen full front. The young man with the medallion, by contrast, holds his head poised correctly on his neck which is structurally continuous with his spine. His shoulders are turned at an angle to the picture plane and painted illusionistically to accommodate that angle, the further shoulder foreshortened, the left half of the chest narrower.

Similarly, the articulation of the face is different in the two portraits. Judging by the angle of the nose and the width of the face, the two heads are turned at the same angle toward the viewer. But the left edge of the face in the New York figure delicately defines a complex structure of skull and tissue while the same edge in the Stockholm portrait is a flat inarticulate curved line. Likewise, the jawline of the youth with the medallion is a sharply highlighted edge gradually receding to a soft shadow as the jaw merges into the tissue of the neck, while the other figure's jaw is drawn as a single flat sharp line. The eyes of the New York portrait are drawn differently from each other, the farther eye foreshortened to accommodate the curving away of the right side of the face. The Stockholm figure's right eye, however, is just as wide as the left, thus flattening the face and giving the figure a strange almost wall-eyed appearance. The mouth in the New York picture is also descriptive of a curving feature seen foreshortened so that the far side is drawn shorter than the near side, while the mouth of the Stockholm youth is more evenly drawn and ultimately flatter. And finally the hair in the New York figure is a softly shadowed mass overlaid with a network of finely distinguished highlights which subtly define the round shape of the head. The other figure's coif is composed of a composite of thick rope-like cords stacked up along an awkwardly placed centre parting and painted with no consideration for the receding surface of the top of head. In the final analysis, the Stockholm picture is a flat, schematic, and generalised image, the work of a competent craftsman who has learned techniques for painting a portrait,

'6FAHY, loc. cit. at note 11 above. For their help and hospitality in Stockholm I would like to thank Dr Goram Alm, curator of the Royal Collection, and Dr Karin R dstr6m.

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8. Giuliano de' Medici, by Botticelli. 75.6 by 52.6 cm. (National Gallery, Washington). 9. Portrait of a man with a medal, by Botticelli. 57.5 by 44 cm. (Uffizi Galleries, Florence). 8.

9.

while the New York picture is a subtly perceived and delicately executed portrait of a particular individual caught in a moment in time. This analysis in itself does not prove that the New York portrait is by Botticelli but it does make abundantly clear that the Stockholm picture is by a different and less sensitive artist. If the Stockholm painting is the work of Botticini, and I believe with Fahy that it is, then the New York portrait is not. Among other likely candidates for authorship that leaves only Botticelli's own shop, but the degree of sensitivity and the subtleties displayed in the treatment

of the figure effectively preclude an anonymous assistant. Nevertheless, the question of whether the Young man holding a medallionis like Botticelli's other works must be answered."17 In terms of the treatment of details certain 'Morellian' parallels can be found in other Botticelli portraits. The structure of the eyes is similar to that in the Portrait of a man formerly in the Filangieri collection in Naples as is the treatment of the hands. The mouth is very close to that in the portrait of Michele Marullo in the Camb6 de Guardans collection in Barcelona (Fig.7), particularly for its abruptly foreshortened side and the arrangement of shadows around it. The hair in the Marullo portrait is painted in the same manner as the hair in the New York portrait: a dark mass is laid down and the highlights are brushed on to enliven the edges and shape the head. The delicacy of shading and surface is close to the London National Gallery Youngman (Fig.6). The conceit of incorporating an inset object held by the sitter is used in the early Man with a medal (Fig.9). The background window frame and foreground ledge, while not unique to Botticelli, appear in several portraits, including Esmeralda Brandini in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Giuliano de' Medici in Washington (Fig.8), and the Filangieri portrait of a man. And, finally, the unnerving intensity of the stare and the consequent lifelikeness of the young man are essential characteristics of most ofBotticelli's portraits. To The portrait, then, fits well into Botticelli's tWuvre. it was work his other with from stylistic parallels judge probably painted around the time he was working in Rome

10. Adoration of theMagi, by Filippino Lippi. 258 by 243 cm. (Uffizi Galleries, Florence).

'7Pertinent discussions of Botticelli's portraits, besides the analyses contained in the ThePortrait passimin the standard monographs, include j. POPE-HENNESSY: Die London [1966]; and the outdated but still useful H.T.KROEBER: Renaissance, desSandro Botticelli, Leipzig [19111]. Einzelportrats

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de'Medici,by Vasari. (Sala di Giovanni delle di Pierfrancesco 11. Portrait of Giovanni

Bande Nere, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence).

12. Detail of the youngest Magus from Fig. 10.

(1481-82) or in the two or three years following. This date is supported by the elaborate setting of background window frame and foreground parapet, details which are absent in his later portraits. In his 1950 catalogue Scharf suggested that the sitter should be recognised as Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and this identification was credible enough to be called 'generally accepted' in the Christie's sale catalogue.18 The evidence to support such an interesting hypothesis, however, was not forthcoming in Scharf's short catalogue entry and no subsequent publication has shed light on the identification. The only clue within the portrait to the identity of the young man is the medallion (Fig.3): the saint portrayed must certainly be intended to refer to the sitter and is possibly his patron saint. 19Unfortunately the identity of the saint is problematical since the fragmentary medallion, cut from a larger rectangular panel, carries no attribute and the saint seems to be a generalised Biblical elder. However, the white-haired, balding figure with a long forked beard often, in Sienese painting of the period, represents S. Giovanni Evangelista. The young man, then, might be named Giovanni and his patron saint might be

the Evangelist.20

Scharf's suggestion that the boy might be identified as Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici (1467-98), the second cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent and an occasional patron of Botticelli, therefore seems plausible. Unfortunately no definite contemporary portraits of Giovanni have survived, though an inventory of 1560 mentions a portrait of him on canvas by Piero di Cosimo, since lost.21 Indirect evidence of his features is presented in the several portraits of him commissioned by the Grand Duke Cosimo as part of dynastic series in the latter sixteenth century. These portraits all derive from the portraits of the Pierfrancesco branch of the Medici in Filippino Lippi's Adorationof the Magi, originally painted for the monastery of S. Donato a Scopeto in 1496 and now in the Uffizi Galleries (Fig. 10). Vasari states that Filippino included portraits of Pierfrancesco di Lorenzo di Bicci, his son Giovanni, and another Pierfrancesco, 'the brother of that Giovanni'.22 No evidence other than Vasari's statement exists that these Medici were portrayed in Filippino's painting, nor can the identity of the individual figures be verified. Vasari apparently believed that the youngest Magus standing to the left of the Virgin represented Giovanni di Pierfrancesco since he used that figure for his model in his portrait of Giovanni for the Sala di Giovanni

'8SCHARF, op.cit. at note 2 above. In an unpublished letter to Scharf of 1941, now in the possession of the present owners, Sidney Sabin, the dealer who sold the painting to Sir Thomas Merton, had already suggested such an identification. Scharf's identification was responsible for the inclusion of the painting in K. LANGEDIJK: The Portraits of the Medici, Florence [1981], Vol.2, p.1045, as an 'uncertain identification' as Giovanni di Pierfrancesco. '9Botticelli has here reversed the traditional arrangement by showing the donor displaying the saint rather than the saint 'presenting' the donor as in most examples in which an individual and his name-saint are depicted. 20This is a noteworthy, if not unique, fact since the patron saint of Florence was the Baptist and any Florentine Giovanni would probably be named after him, rather than after the Evangelist.

LANGEDIJK, op.cit. in note 18 above, Vol.2, p. 1044. 22Vasari must have meant Lorenzo. He apparently confused the name of Giovanni's brother, Lorenzo, with that of Lorenzo's son Pierfrancesco, a not too surprising error since, as court painter to Cosimo I, he was concerned with the direct lineage of the ruling family, that is Cosimo's grandfather Giovanni, and was uninterested in the genealogy of the other branch of the Medici family. 'The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici', THE See j. SHEARMAN, BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, Vol.117 [1975], p.22; also L. BERTI and U. BALDINI: Filippino Lippi, Florence [1957], p.88. Several problems exist concerning the identification of the Medici figures in the painting. LANGEDIJK consequently rejects Vasari's argument entirely and concludes that the Adoration has no Medici portraits (op.cit. at note 18 above, Vol. 1, pp. 102-07).
21

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delle Bande Nere painted in 1556-59 (Fig. 11).23 The same model was used by both Cristofano dell' Altissimo in a portrait of Giovanni of 1562-65 and by Lorenzo Vaiani (Lo Sciorina) in a double portrait with Caterina Sforza of
1585.24

Does the young man with the medallion resemble Filippino Lippi's young Magus (Fig. 12)? Filippino's figure is a thin handsome man characterised physiognomically by a high broad forehead, a prominent nose, a pouty appearance to his mouth, and a strong chin with a marked cleft. The young man with the medallion is characterised by similar physiognomic traits: a high forehead, flaring nostrils, a pronounced cleft in the upper lip, a slightly protruding lower lip, and a strong chin with an incipient cleft. The differences between the two portraits could be primarily a function of age: the young man, caught between boyishness and manhood judging by the delicacy of his features and the soft downy quality of his skin, is perhaps fifteen to eighteen years old. The Magus is fully mature, though not yet ageing, perhaps twenty-four to thirty years old. The hair colour, however, is dark brown in the Magus portrait, light brown in the New York portrait. In the final analysis, though it is possible that the two figures could be the same person portrayed ten to fifteen years apart by two different artists, the visual evidence is too thin to warrant a definitive answer and the young man with the medallion is best left

nameless.25
An understanding of the essential meaning of the portrait rests on a conscious perception of the naturalism of the figure and the artistic devices which the artist has used to achieve that effect (Fig. 1). The young man self-consciously displays the medallion to us in order that we may perceive not only the saint's symbolic relation to him - apparently his name-saint - but also that a tension is set up between the style of the trecento painting and the style of the quattrocento painting. The gold-ground icon is flat and

unnaturalistic while the young man is painted in a vivid illusionistic manner. Yet the young man is just a painting while the medallion is a real object, a trecento painting, not the imitation of a trecento painting. The contrast between the two styles is accentuated by the picture's carefully constructed space delimited in the foreground by the ledge overlapped by two fingers of the sitter's hand and in the background by the window plane overlapped by the figure's shoulders and the top of his head. The depth of this pocket of space is defined by the angle of the foreshortened torso, an illusionistic device. The real medallion is caught within this fictive space since it is 'behind' the painted fingers and in front of the oblique torso, and thus it is co-opted into the illusionistic narrative: the medallion's reality confirms the 'truth' of the painted young man. The life-like young man holds a painting already antique when he sat for the painter. In the full bloom of youth, he contrasts in his lifelikeness with the rigid unnatural image of the saint. The artist has set up an inevitable opposition between life and art. And, in the typical playing out of this opposition, life is fragile and evanescent, exemplified by the subtlety of painting and personality in the young man, while art is durable, as the antique tondo testifies. On one level the Botticelli portrait is another illustration of the theme of the fragility of life. 26 At a more profound level, however, it is a vanitaspainting, an illustration of the idea that the material world is an illusion. No one who stands in front of the actual painting can fail to realise that the beautiful young man, so exquisitely 'real', who is posed with an old painting is himself an 'old painting' in front of which we are posed. This may partly account for the intensity of the young man as well as for the seriousness of his expression. The power of Botticelli's portrait lies in his ability to express the exquisite beauty inherent in life while simultanepusly confronting the fragility of that beauty.27 Hunter of New York College, CityUniversity

23Theportrait of Giovanni in the tondo at the base of the vault may be the work of Vasari's assistantsbut it was certainly done under his close supervision;see E. e i Medici,Florence [1980], p.154; and P. and A. CECCHI: ALLEGRI Palazzo Vecchio Milan [1964], p.44. LANGEDIJK BAROCCHI: mistakenlyidentifies the Vasaripittore, prototype for Vasari's Giovanni di Pierfrancescoas the attendant in Filippino's Adoration rather than the young Magus: op.cit.at note 18 above, p. 1045. 24Ibid.,Vol.2, 1042-44. See also Gli Uffizi, catalogo generale,Florence [1979], pp.700-05.Bronzino,however,reliedon the portraitof the attendantin Filippino's painting for his portrait of Giovanni in the seriesof Medici portraitshe designed in 1555-65 to decorate the walls of Cosimo's studio; see E. BACCHESCHI: L'Opera Milan [1973], No. 148; and LANGEDIJK, del Bronzino, completa op.cit.at note 18 above, Vol.2. p. 1043. 25Supportingthe identification, however, is the circumstantial evidence of the

apparent age of the young man with the medallion. If he is Giovanni and he was between fifteen and eighteen as he appears to be in the portrait, the painting would have been executed between 1482 and 1485, the probable date of the portrait based on its style. 26Botticellihere may be continuing a tradition characteristicof earlier portraits in Florence. POPE-HENNESSY observes that 'initially the role of the Renaissance portrait was commemorative; it was consciously directed to a future when the living would no longer be alive', op.cit.at note 17 above, p.8. and Death', in 27David Rosand's excellent essay 'The Portrait, The Courtier, and edited by ROSAND The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, Castiglione: ROBERT W. HANNING came to my attention after the completion of this article. It expands the frameof referencefor my interpretationof the meaning of Botticelli's painting.

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