Researchers Propose Pituitary Tumor May Explain Eye in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London concluded that a pituitary adenoma likely caused the irregular eye alignment in Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” painted between 1484 and 1486. The team reached the finding after applying facial recognition software to five portraits believed to depict Simonetta Vespucci.

” The researchers first advanced the pituitary-tumor theory seven years earlier and strengthened it with additional historical documents for the current study.

First author Domiziana Nardelli cited letters between Piero Vespucci and Lorenzo de’ Medici describing Vespucci’s collapse at a ball, followed by headaches, hallucinations, vomiting, and high fever while she rested in a darkened room. Nardelli said these symptoms align with a rapidly expanding pituitary tumor and overturn the prior view that tuberculosis caused her death at age 23.

The same letters and the facial analysis also informed the team’s reading of Botticelli’s “Allegorical Portrait of a Woman,” which shows the model lactating despite having no children.

Botticelli’s attachment to Vespucci, known in Renaissance society as “La Sans Par,” continued after her death. When the artist died in 1510 he requested burial at her feet. com in November, when a painting attributed to Pietro Perugino, who worked with Botticelli on the Sistine Chapel between 1480 and 1482, sold for £685,000 at a small English auction house after years stored beneath a garage workbench.