A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts
Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510) · c. 1483-1486
A young man in a red tunic, led by the hand by a woman in white and red who is usually identified as Venus, is brought before seven women seated in a half circle. They are the Liberal Arts, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy, each with an attribute, with an enthroned figure in red presiding over them at the upper right. Large patches of plaster are lost at the bottom and the colours have faded to soft earth tones, but the seated figures keep their grace, and the boy's profile is drawn with Botticelli's characteristic clean line.
The fresco was painted in the years around 1483 to 1486 on the wall of a first-floor bedroom in the Villa Lemmi near Florence, owned by the Tornabuoni family, facing the fresco of Venus and the Graces that hangs beside it. The youth is most often taken to be Lorenzo Tornabuoni, whose marriage to Giovanna degli Albizzi in 1486 may have occasioned the decoration, though other identifications have been argued. Rediscovered under whitewash in 1873 and left in place until 1881, both scenes were detached, sold by the dealer Stefano Bardini and bought by the Louvre in 1882.
Did You Know? The youth is usually taken to be Lorenzo Tornabuoni, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in his own bedroom.
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