Word: vespucci
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Simonetta Vespucci, the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, died of tuberculosis at 23, but it is said Botticelli used her lissome and rhythmical curves as the model for Venus on her half-shell and Flora in La Primavera. Vespucci may have looked like that, or she may not. Maybe she was a blond pudge like Pamela Anderson. Getting tumbled in a wave of neo-Platonic fantasizing about how outer shape mirrors inner essence--"For Soule is Forme, and doth the Bodie make," wrote the poet Spenser in 1596--may be great for the figure and complexion when court painters like...
Gradually, the goddess of the palazzo comes closer. She turns toward you in three-quarters view, in imitation of Flemish painting. (There had been a big vogue in Florence for artists like Hans Memling and Petrus Christus.) This shift is just beginning in Botticelli's portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, but her pearl-encrusted beauty still has the idealized remoteness of myth. From the turn toward the viewer's eye would be born the modern idea of portraiture as the making of a "speaking likeness"--speaking, that is, to a viewer, rather than holding itself aloof. But absolute truth to nature...
...immigrants from the Old World conquered the New. As the historian Carl Wittke noted, eight nationalities were represented on Columbus' first voyage to a continent that eventually received its name from a German mapmaker (Martin Walseemuller) working in a French college, who honored an Italian explorer (Amerigo Vespucci) sailing under the flag of Portugal...
...Fairburn is an emotionally needy Radcliffe alumna, a self-described writer whose role seems limited to one line about needing psychiatric assistance. She lives with fellow Radcliffe alum Margaret Gaminsky, a psychology researcher who work with chimpanzees. When they decide to renovate their apartment, the two women hire Mutt Vespucci (Chris Wilder), a crude, unpretentious handy-person, bike messenger and bouncer who delves into a tortuous love-hate relationship with Margaret...
...coca plant is part of the cultural fabric of the northern Andes. Inca nobility chewed the plant, as suggested by the discovery of pre-Columbian statues with bulging cheeks--presumably crammed with coca leaves. The same practice was observed by the explorer Amerigo Vespucci in what is now northern Venezuela during his first voyage around the world...