Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510): Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph) c.1475 (Tempera on wood. Städel, Frankfurt) - Vespucci’s outfit is a nymph costume in the antique or classical-mythological style… The background contributes to Simonetta’s idealisation: it is as black as that of the little stone carving she wears around her neck, and it lends the painting the plasticity of a relief. Botticelli depicts the contemporary feminine ideal – consummate in beauty, virtue and conceptual proximity to antiquity…