She Was The Hottie Of Her Day

All of Florence was said to have been bowled over by the beauty of Simonetta Vespucci, Amerigo's cousin by marriage, and the mythologizing about her has been relentless.

Writes Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in Amerigo:

"Unsurprisingly, Simonetta's story has inspired a lot of romantic nonsense. Something about her makes historians' eyes goggle and their prose gooey. The vulgar assumption, for instance, that she was Botticelli's model for all his most famous beauties seems to be based on no better grounds than the feeling that the most beautiful woman of the day ought to have modeled for the most sensitive painter."

The painting above is Piero di Cosimo's "Simonetta Vespucci" (ca. 1480). Art historian wags joke that hers is the face that launched a thousand prints.