It is unlikely that the figure in this unusually large, magnificent painting bears any resemblance to the real Simonetta Vespucci (ca. 1453–1476), the platonic beloved of Giuliano de’ Medici, under whose banner he entered a fabled joust in 1475. Her great beauty inspired poetic and painted tributes in which her own features would have been assimilated to literary conventions originating in the poetry of Petrarch. Angelo Poliziano’s description of Simonetta in his poem celebrating the joust can be read as a gloss on Botticelli’s painting: "She is fair-skinned, unblemished white, and white is her garment. . . ; the ringlets of her golden hair descend on a forehead humbly proud." She wears an antique cameo that belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici depicting the victorious Apollo and the defeated Marsyas bound to a tree trunk.

• Exhibition History

  Bode Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. "Gesichter der Renaissance: Meisterwerke italienischer Portrait-Kunst," August 25–November 20, 2011.
  
  New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini," December 21, 2011–March 18, 2012.