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Shown from the chest up, a man with pale, yellow-tinged skin is angled to our right with downcast eyes in this vertical portrait painting. He is cleanshaven with chin-length black hair. There is a deep vertical crease in the center of his forehead between dark brows. His eyes are hazel brown, and he has a long, hooked nose over slightly parted, pale pink lips. He wears a high-necked, red tunic with deep pleats down his chest. The arm closer to us has a fawn-brown sleeve. He is shown behind a narrow ledge where a brown, dove-sized bird with an ivory-white belly sits on a twig in the lower left corner. A window opening behind the man has two wooden shutters. The shutter to the right is closed, and the one to the left is pushed open so a sliver of pale sky is visible.

Sandro Botticelli

Giuliano de' Medici, c. 1478/1480

West Building, Ground Floor - Gallery 39

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

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.56

Artists / Makers

Sandro Botticelli (painter) Florentine, 1446 - 1510

Image Use

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Overview

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.

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.

[1] The emblem of the queen bee surrounded by her subjects, visible on the reverse of the painting, appears also on the reverse of a medal made by Michele Mazzafirri for Grand Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici in 1588; see Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th-18th Centuries, Florence, 1983: 2:760-761. It is uncertain whether the NGA painting is the one described as "1o quadro colla testa di Giuliano de' Medici" ("one picture with the head of Giuliano de' Medici") in the 1503 inventory of the Cafaggiolo branch of the family collection (see John Shearman, "The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici," Burlington Magazine 117 [1975]: 26); in fact, several versions of Giuliano's portrait must have been painted, a number of which still exist today. No portrait of him is mentioned, however, in the 1492 inventory of the Medici Palace in Via Larga (see Libro d'inventario dei beni di Lorenzo di Magnifico, ed. by Marco Spallanzani and Giovanni Gaeta Bertelà, Florence, 1992; and Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè Dal Poggetto, "I dipinti di Palazzo Medici nell'inventario di Simone de Stagio delle Pozze: Problemi di committenza e di arredo," in Toscana al temp di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Politica, economia, cultura, arte. Convegno di studi promosso dale Università di Firenze, Pisa e Siena, 5-8 novembre 1992, 3 vols., Pisa, 1996: 160-161) or in the 1560 inventory of the apartments of Cosimo I de' Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio (see James H. Beck, "The Medici Inventory of 1560," Antichità Viva 13 [1974]: no. 3, 64-66, and no. 5, 61-63). A "quadretto pittovi la testa di Giuliano di Piero de' Medici in carta pecora" ("a little picture with the head of Giuliano di Piero de' Medici painted on parchment"), certainly not identifiable with the NGA painting, is listed in inventories of 1553 and later (Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici. 15th-18th Centuries, 3 vols., Florence, 1981-1987: (1983):1063).

[2] The presence of a label with the inscription Etruria pittrice (see also note 5) suggests that by 1796 the painting belonged to marquis Alfonso Tacoli-Canacci, in whose catalogue it is registered under no. 444. As Dr. Vincenzo Buonocore informs Miklós Boskovits in a letter of 17 June 2002 (copy in NGA curatorial files), the painting was probably acquired by Tacoli Canacci after 1792, as it does not appear in the list of his paintings compiled in that year (now in the Real Biblioteca in Madrid, ms. II/574).

[3] The Getty Provenance Index states that the painting used to belong to the Coccapani Imperiali family. A handwritten note on the back of a photograph in Bernard Berenson's photographic files at the Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, Florence, states that the painting was "found" in Modena and that it entered the Cini collection through a Modenese dealer (see following notes). According to Dr. Vincenzo Buonocore, who is preparing a detailed study on the history of the Tacoli-Canacci collection, after the death of marquese Alfonso, his paintings went to his nephew and heir, Pietro Tacoli, and subsequently to the daughter of the latter, Adelaide, wife of Alessandro Bellincini Bagnesi in Modena.

[4] The anonymous author of an article in the magazine Europeo (8 July 1951, translation in NGA curatorial files) states that the painting was acquired "before the war [World War II] [by] Count Vittorio Cini through Prof. Zelindo Bonaccini of Modena." Working also as a painter, Bonaccini was known mostly for his activity as a dealer (see Alberto Barbieri, Arte ed artisti a Modena, Modena, 1982: 407).

[5] A publication on the paintings and works of art belonging to the Cini collection (Nino Barbantini, Il Castello di Monselice, Venice, 1940) does not yet mention the painting. However, Dr. Buonocore owns a list of paintings sold in 1940 by Adele Bagnesi to Count Cini which includes the Giuliano de' Medici (communication to Miklós Boskovits).

[6] According to a handwritten note on a photograph owned by Bernard Berenson (see note 3), the painting was with Wildenstein's by 1948; it was offered by this firm to Rush H. Kress for acquisition on 30 March 1949 (copy of letter in NGA curatorial files).

[7] The Wildenstein invoice to the Kress Foundation for 16 items, including the Botticelli painting, is dated 23 June 1949 (copy in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/971).

Associated Names

Bagnesi, Adele, Marchesa
Bonaccini, Zelindo
Cini Foundation
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Medici, Ferdinand I de', Grand Duke
Tacoli Canacci, Alfonso, Marchese
Tacoli, Adelaide
Tacoli, Pietro
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

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.

Bibliography

1942: Bettini, Sergio. Botticelli. Milan, 1942:25-26, repro. 46.

1956: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 36-39, no. 10, repro.

1956: Walker, John. "The Nation's Newest Old Masters." The National Geographic Magazine 110, no. 5 (November 1956): 624, color repro. 635.

1957: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 62.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 68, repro.

1960: The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 6.

1961: Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 45, color repro. pl. 38.

1962: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Treasures from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1962: 18, color repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 84, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 17.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:46, color repro.

1966: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 121-122, fig. 335.

1968: Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 30-31, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 10, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 38, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:83-84; 2:pl. 55.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 97, no. 59, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 57, repro.

1999: Dempsey, Charles. "Portraits and Masks in the Art of Lorenzo de' Medici, Botticelli, and Politian's Stanze per la Giostra." Renaissance Quarterly 52:1 (Spring 1999): 24-25, fig. 15.

2003: Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 170-175, color repro.

2011: Johnson, Ken. “Getting Personal.” New York Times 161, no. 55,628 (December 23, 2011): C30, repro.

2011: Rubin, Patricia. "Understanding Renaissance Portraits." In The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini ed. Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann. Exh. cat. Berlin 2011. New York, 2011: 10.

2012: Luchs, Alison. "Verrocchio and the Bust of Albiera degli Albizzi: Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration." Artibus et historiae 66 (2012): 84, repro.

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.

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.