Portrait of a Lady known as Esmeralda Brandini

A woman in a sheer summer dress turns towards us, one hand resting on a window frame. Earlier Florentine women were painted in strict profile; this turn may be the first three-quarter pose in Florentine portraiture.

The story behind the painting

Botticelli painted this tempera on panel around 1475; Wikidata dates it to the 1470s. The sitter's name comes from an old inscription on the windowsill, Smeralda di M. Bandinelli, wife of Vi... Bandinelli, probably added later, since the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli only took that surname in 1530. On that evidence she may be Smeralda Donati Brandini, wife of Viviano Brandini, mother of the Florentine goldsmith Michelangelo de Viviano, and grandmother of Baccio. Archive records tell us that in 1469 Smeralda was 30, Viviano 38, and their children Michelangelo 12, Lucrezia 10 and Giovanbatista 2.

What to look for

Notice what Botticelli changed. Earlier Florentine portraits showed women in profile; here she turns three-quarters, her hand on the window frame, and Wikipedia quotes art historians calling this Botticelli's own invention. Leaving the profile behind brought a new sense of movement into the portrait. She wears a cotta, a light summer gown, under a sheer overdress called a guarnello. The painting even helped historians identify the similar transparent overdress worn by the Mona Lisa. It is a narrow upright panel, about 65.7 by 41 cm.

Meaning and intent

Not everyone agrees on who held the brush. Some have suggested one of Botticelli's assistants painted it in the 1470s, and William Michael Rossetti mocked critics who credited an invented 'Amico di Sandro'. At one time it was even suspected to be a forgery by Ignazio Hugford. The Victoria and Albert Museum attributes it to Botticelli himself. Whoever she was and whoever painted her, the woman at the window marks a quiet turning point: a sitter no longer frozen in profile, but caught as if about to speak.

Legacy

By 1805 the portrait belonged to Count James de Pourtalès Gorgier in Paris. In 1867 Charles Augustus Howell bought it at Christie's on behalf of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who believed the same lady appears in Botticelli's Primavera; that idea now seems unlikely. Rossetti later sold it to his patron Constantine Alexander Ionides, who bequeathed it with his collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it is museum number CAI.100.