Artist: Sandro Botticelli Completion
Date: 1485
Style: Early Renaissance
 Genre: religious painting
Technique: tempera
Material: wood Dimensions: 82 x 54 cm
Gallery: Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

"Renaissance Italian art is widely considered some of the most beautiful pictorial efforts ever produced. Amongst the masters of the period is Sandro Botticelli, a Florentine painter who is responsible for creating two of the most iconic paintings of the period; The Birth of Venus and The Primavera. 

When looking closely at these two subjects, the similarities of the two protagonists seem to indicate the existence of a muse, and historians believe her to be Simonetta Vespucci, the most beautiful woman of Florence and hence of the Renaissance as a whole. 

SAt the age of 16, Simonetta was married to Marco Vespucci, a Florentine student at the Banco di San Giorgio in Genoa and a distant relative of Amerigo Vespucci. Marco was desperately in love with the young Geonese beauty and his proposal was accepted due to his advantageous connections to the Medici Family in Florence. Simonetta and Marco were married in 1469 in Florence, at the Medici’s palazzo in Via Larga and then the reception was held at the lavish di Careggi. Simonetta had won the favour of the Medicis immediately. Her beauty and grace soon mesmerized the whole of Florence, and caught the attention of more than one man.

Simonetta became known as the most beautiful woman in Florence, and later the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance.Giuliano won the tournament and the affection of la bella Simonetta, who was nominated “The Queen of Beauty” at that event. Whether the two became lovers its unknown, and poor Simonetta died of pulmonary tuberculosis a year later in April 1476, at only 22.

Her beauty however lives on in the paintings of Sandro Botticelli, or at least many believe it to be so. The recurring figure of the slender, classic beauty crowned with a mass of golden strawberry blonde hair resembles the descriptions of Simonetta.

Though some art historians dispute the rapport between Botticelli and Simonetta as a romantic notion, we can’t resist but speculate on the most beautiful women of the renaissance being the muse of one of the most important artists of the period, such perfect symmetry.

The similarities between the subjects are undisputable, though many believe those features to be representative of the canons of beauty of the time more than referenced to a single subject. Botticelli however was  definitely commissioned a portrait of Simonetta by Giuliano de Medici for the jousting tournament, and that’s where the artistic infatuation may have started.

The remarkable similarity between Simonetta Vespucci and Botticelli’s Venus

There is however one fact that suggests more than just an artistic rapport between master and muse.

Whnen Botticelli died in 1510 requested to be buried at Simonetta’s feet in the Church of Ognissanti, parish church of the Vespucci – in Florence. His wish was in fact carried out when he died some 34 years later, in 1510.

Though the world has seen many muses rise and fall since the 15th century, we find it difficult to imagine a stronger bond, or a more chivalric one than that between the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance and the most sensitive artist of the period." 

http://www.swide.com/art-culture/history/birth-of-venus-model-the-history-of-simonetta-vespucci-renaissance-most-beautiful-woman/2013/10/27