Piero di Cosimo - Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci

Title: Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci
Artist: Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522)
Date: 1490
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 57 x 42 cm

In this portrait executed after her death, Simonetta is a bare-breasted, pure, young woman with a married-woman’s hairdo. Simonetta died when 23, hence the symbols- the gold necklace with a snake twining it and going for its own tail (a symbol of the circle of life or of eternal life), the dark cloud and her turned towards a dead tree.