1. Simonetta Vespucci, nicknamed, was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci.
10 Facts About Simonetta Vespucci
1. 2.
Simonetta Vespucci was known as the greatest beauty of her age in Italy, and was allegedly the model for many paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, and other Florentine painters.
3.
At age sixteen she married Marco Simonetta Vespucci, son of Piero, who was a distant cousin of the explorer and cartographer Amerigo Simonetta Vespucci.
4.
Smitten with Simonetta Vespucci, Marco was accepted by her parents as their daughter's prospective bridegroom; they likely felt that the marriage would be advantageous because Marco's family was well connected in Florence, especially to the Medici family.
5.
Simonetta Vespucci was a married woman and a member of a powerful family allied to his.
6.
Simonetta Vespucci was twenty-two at the time of her death.
7.
In 2019, a team of medical historians argued that the supposed portraits of Simonetta Vespucci show evidence that she suffered from a pituitary adenoma secreting prolactin and growth hormone secretion; the increase in tumor volume led her to death.
8.
Simonetta Vespucci finished one of his most famous paintings, The Birth of Venus, around 1486,10 years after Simonetta's death; some have claimed that Venus, in this painting, closely resembles her.
9.
Simonetta Vespucci's wish was carried out when he died 34 years later, in 1510.
10.
Yet how closely this resembles Simonetta Vespucci is uncertain, not least because it is a posthumous portrait created about 14 years after her death.