Simonetta Vespucci

 Simonetta Vespucci, known as La Bella Simonetta, was born in 1453 in Genoa or Porto Venere, her father being a nobleman named Gaspare Cattaneo della Volta, a relative of a 16th-century doge named Leonardo Cattaneo della Volta, and her mother's name was Cattocchia Spinola.

At the age of sixteen, in April 1469, the beautiful Genoese became engaged to Marco Vespucci, son of Piero, who was a distant cousin of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

In love with Simonetta, Marco was accepted as a suitor, a marriage considered advantageous as Marco's family was well connected to the powerful de' Medici family.

Simonetta was very popular at the Florentine court, attracting the attention of dé Medici brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano.

The couple's wedding took place at the palace in Via Larga, and the party was organized at Villa di Careggi, preceded by a tournament held at Piazza Santa Croce, during which Giuliano carried a painting of Simonetta painted by Botticelli, under which they were inscribed the words La Sans Pareille ("The Peerless One").

Historians assumed thus Giuliano was in love with her, despite the fact that Simonetta was already a married woman, a member of a powerful family.

Sinonetta died after just one year, on the night of April 26-27, 1476, at the age of twenty-two. It appears that her death was caused by tuberculosis or a pituitary adenoma.

The deceased young woman was carried around the city in an open coffin and was buried at the Church of Ognissanti, the necropolis of the Vespucci family.

Her husband remarried soon after, and Giuliano de' Medici, her admirer, was assassinated in the Pazzi conspiracy two years later, in 1478.

The Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli, who painted portraits of many nobles of the era, also created several portraits of Simonetta, one of the most famous, The Birth of Venus, being painted around 1486, ten years after her death.

Some art historians suggest that Botticelli was also in love with Simonetta, which is why he asked to be buried in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence, where the beautiful Genoese had been laid, his wish being granted 34 years later, upon his death.