Retrato de Juliano de Médici

Framed by a bright window of azure sky, a young man looks down with eyes almost closed. This small Bergamo panel is often named as the first of Botticelli's three portraits of Giuliano de' Medici, murdered in 1478.

The story behind the painting

Giuliano de' Medici was the younger brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was killed in 1478 in the Pazzi conspiracy, a plot backed by Pope Sixtus IV and other Italian princes to end Medici rule in Florence. The plot failed: Lorenzo escaped and the assassins were arrested. Just afterwards Botticelli was called to paint the condemned conspirators as hanged men on the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio. In the same period he probably painted Giuliano, at least once in life and perhaps again after his death from his death mask, as the closed eyelids suggest, along with copies for people who wanted a keepsake of the young man.

What to look for

As in the other two versions, Giuliano is shown in three-quarter view with his head turned so far to the right that he appears almost in profile. A furrow marks the centre of his forehead; the nose is aquiline and pointed, the hair thick, black and curly, the chin slight, the upper lip thin and the lower one full. His eyes are almost closed and his melancholy gaze is turned downward. He wears the red, fur-trimmed jacket of the rich Florentine class of the day. Here a greenish shirt shows at the sleeves. Behind him, a window opens onto an azure sky that pales towards the horizon, its sill level with his collar, so the bright window frames his more strongly coloured head and sets it off by contrast.

Meaning and intent

The Bergamo portrait is usually named as the first of the series, because its form sits between the complexity of the Washington version and the simplicity of the Berlin one. It has no dove, no dead branch and no half-closed window, only the clear sky behind the head. Yet the lowered gaze and nearly shut eyes are the same, and the French Wikipedia article links such closed eyelids to a death mask. The article reads the figure as a proud man conscious of his high place, here set against open air and light.

Legacy

All three surviving versions, in Bergamo, Berlin and Washington, are of uncertain origin, and scholars still disagree about which is the original and which are copies, since the painted surfaces are not in good condition. The article describes this one as tempera on wood, about 54 by 36 cm, from about 1478 to 1480; Wikidata gives 59.5 by 39.3 cm and no date, so the sources disagree on its size. It is kept in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo.