Pick of the week

My sometime stablemate in The Times, Prof Norman Hammond, has sent me an interesting suggestion regarding the Botticelli portrait (far

right) sold by Sotheby’s for £66.6 million (Art market, February 24). He writes: ‘The roundel (inset) looks to me as though it may be a miniature/micro mosaic, from the bold dark folds in the saint’s robe. Although such micro-mosaics are famed from the Grand Tour period, they go back at least to the 14th century—there’s a splendid example about 30cm high (12in) at the Dionysiou monastery on Mount Athos, again of a saint. i wonder if Botticelli’s subject is displaying a proud acquisition from an eastward tour?’

That is a good thought, but the sitter need not have travelled. Lorenzo the Magnificent surrounded himself with humanists and students of ancient Greek philosophy. The Byzantine image might suggest a more contemporary connection. There were many Florentines with strong Greek links, such as the Acciaioli family, until 1460 Dukes of Athens and Lords of Thebes. Perhaps—no more than a guess—the sitter might be a younger member of that family. Zanobi Acciaioli (1461–1519), for instance, would have been about the right age, although he did not learn Greek until after he had become a Dominican in 1495. Later, he was a notable translator and Prefect of the Vatican library.

It might also be worth the new owner’s while to try to elucidate the significance of the saint’s fingers. It is not a conventional gesture of blessing, nor the configuration representing the name of Jesus. If it could be elucidated, it might identify the saint, and that might suggest a first name for the subject.