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Giuliano Medici, the younger brother of Lorenzo, was nursing a bad knee on Easter Day 1478 and had to be helped to the cathedral—by the very men who were plotting to kill him and his brother during mass. The assassins, members and supporters of the Pazzi family, banking rivals of the Medici, awaited their signal. As worshipers bowed their heads at the elevation of the host, Giuliano was brutally stabbed. Lorenzo escaped to the sacristy, remaining there while the Pazzi partisans attempted to seize the government. They soon failed, however, and Lorenzo resumed control.
The murder of Giuliano shocked Florence, and a number of portraits were ordered for public display to serve both as memorials and as warnings to other plotters. Botticelli's painting may have been the prototype for others, and lent symbolic gravity to Guiliano’s passing, showing him as an icon, almost a saint. The open window and mourning dove were familiar symbols of death, alluding to the flight of the soul and the deceased's passage to the afterlife. Some scholars, noting the lowered eyelids, suggest this portrait was painted posthumously from a death mask.
Object Data
Medium
tempera on panel
Dimensions
overall: 75.5 x 52.5 cm (29 3/4 x 20 11/16 in.)
framed: 105.7 x 81.3 x 11.3 cm (41 5/8 x 32 x 4 7/16 in.)
Credit Line
Accession Number
1952.5.56
Artists / Makers
Sandro Botticelli (painter) Florentine, 1446 - 1510
Image Use
This image is in the public domain.
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Detail Information
Provenance
Grand Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici [1551-1609], Florence.[1] Marchese Alfonso Tacoli Canacci [1724-1801], Florence, by 1796;[2] by inheritance to his nephew, Pietro Tacoli [1773-1847], Modena; by inheritance to his daughter, Adelaide Tacoli; through her marriage into the Bellincini Bagnesi family, Modena; by descent to Marchesa Adele Bagnesi;[3] sold 1940 through (Zelindo Bonaccini [1890-1967], Modena)[4] to Count Vittorio Cini [1885-1977], Venice;[5] sold to (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York), probably in 1948;[6] sold June 1949 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA.
Exhibition History
- 1999
- Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, The National Gallery, London, 1999-2000, no. 1, repro.
- 2001
- Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's 'Ginevra de' Benci' and Renaissance Portraits of Women, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-2002, no. 27, color repro.
- 2009
- Botticelli, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, 2009-2010, no. 5, repro.
- 2011
- The Portrait in Renaissance Italy: From Masaccio to Bellini, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011-2012, no. 52, repro.
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- 1989
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- 1990
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- 1990
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- 1991
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- 1991
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- 1992
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- 1993
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- 1994
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- 1996
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- 1997
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- 1997
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- 1998
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- 1999
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- 1999
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- 2000
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- 2000
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- 2001
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- 2003
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- 2004
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- 2004
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2008
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- 2010
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- 2010
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- 2011
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- 2011
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- 2012
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- 2014
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- 2015
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- 2016
- Bacchi, Andrea, and Andrea De Marchi. “Vittorio Cini collezionista di pittura antica. Una splendida avventura, dal Castello di Monselico alla dimora veneziana, da Nino Barbantini a Federico Zeri.” In Andrea Bacchi and Andrea De Marchi, eds. La Galleria di Palazzo Cini. Dipinti, sculture, oggetti d'arte. Venice, 2016: 389, fig. 2.
- 2016
- Madersbach, Lukas. "'fatto alla spera'? Das Porträt des Leon Battista Alberti aus den Orti Oricellari." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58, no. 3 (2016, published February 2017): 319-347, esp. 340, 341 fig. 22, 342.
- 2018
- Valagussa, Giovanni, ed. Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. Dipinti italiani del Trecento e del Quattrocento: Catalogo completo. Milan, 2018: 69-70, 72, fig. 1.
- 2019
- Strehlke, Carl Brandon. Botticelli Portrait Painter. Marullo Adventurer Poet. London, 2019: 23, fig. 12.
- 2019
- Walmsley, Elizabeth, Alexander J. Noelle, with Babette Hartwieg. "The Portraits of Giuliano de' Medici by Sandro Botticelli." Facture: conservation, science, art history 4 (2019): 2-33, 3 unnumbered fig. (detail), figs. 1, 12, 13, details: fig. 6a, 7, 8a, 9, 11, 14.
- 2019
- Zambrano, Patrizia. "Sandro Botticelli and the birth of modern portraiture." In Ana Debenedetti and Caroline Elam, eds. Botticelli Past and Present. London, 2019: 21, 26-28, fig. 1.13.
- 2021
- Debenedetti, Ana and Pierre Curie, eds. Botticelli, artiste & designer. Exh. cat. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 2021: 18, 133, 134, fig. 41.
- 2021
- Debenedetti, Ana. Botticelli: Artist and Designer. London, 2021: 136-137, fig. 56.
- 2022
- Acidini, Cristina. Botticelli. Pisa, 2022: 83-87, repro.
- 2022
- Strehlke, Carl Brandon. “Botticelli’s Faces.” In Cecilia Frosinini and Rachel McGarry, eds. Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi. Exh. cat. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2022: 59, fig. 37.
- 2023
- Frosinini, Cecilia. “The Under-Line: Revealing Drawing and Modeling Beneath Botticelli’s Paintings.” In Furio Rinaldi, ed. Botticelli Drawings. Exh. cat. Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2023: 53-54, fig. 7a.
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