1470s -1500 · profile, medal and ideal identity

Julien de Medici, Michel Marulle, a young man with a medallion and an ideal female figure show how Botticelli oscillates between resemblance, dynastic memory and constructed beauty.

Botticelli's Florentine portrait develops in a culture where personal identity, family and Antiquity respond to each other. The effigies of Julien de Medici often use an austere profile or three-quarters, sometimes distributed after his assassination in 1478: resemblance becomes political memory. The Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion places an older image, probably a saint, in the hands of the model, creating a dialogue between individuals contemporary and authority of the past. The Portrait of Michel Marulle, humanist and soldier of Greek origin, combines black clothing, sideways gaze and intellectual character. The ideal Portrait of a young woman, sometimes associated with Simonetta Vespucci without documentary certainty, organizes pearls, braids and profile according to a beauty which can be commemorative or allegorical rather than a simple survey of life. The proposed identifications must therefore be distinguished from certainties. The "Portraits of Sandro Botticelli" selection notably compares Portrait of Julien de Medici and Portrait of Michel Marulle. His reading favors color.

In Botticelli, recognizing a face also means asking what the portrait wants to preserve: a person, a lineage, a virtue or an ideal.