Where Botticelli begins to differ from his teacher is in his portrayals of the human figure. His depiction of the male body, whether nude, seminude, or draped, reflects Humanism’s affirmation of the individual, as well as the renewed interest in the beauty and proportions of classical antiquity occurring in 15th-century Florence. 

One of Botticelli’s lasting artistic legacies was the creation of portrait techniques that affirmed the individual. Drawn in preparation for either stand-alone portraits or figures in larger narrative scenes, Botticelli’s head studies address the following concerns: how to convincingly model the face, how to represent the play of light, and how to achieve psychological individualization. 

The late 1470s and 1480s marked a career high for Botticelli. He was successfully managing a large workshop and producing works in a variety of media. His linear drawing style was easily adapted into other materials: paintings, prints, book illustrations, decorative woodwork, embroideries, and tapestries. Such diversification helped Botticelli’s workshop adapt to the ever-changing market.

Coinciding with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, and for the rest of his career, Botticelli progressively shifted away from an emphasis on physical beauty and anatomical accuracy. Instead, he created powerful images of raw emotion. In his late designs, figures are compressed and moved to the foreground, faces are distorted, and gestures are excessively animated. The spiritual messages outweigh the balanced proportions of earlier decades. 

The impenetrable style of Botticelli’s late paintings, his heavy reliance on his workshop, and the repetition of his formulas led to a decline in appreciation for his work, and the artist died in near poverty in May 1510. His legacy was rejected by his own family, who did not want to be responsible for his debts. Possibly left uncompleted in his studio, the poignant Adoration of the Magi is a work of strong spiritual power. In the last room of the exhibition, this work is reunited with its preparatory drawings for the first time. Drawn on linen, they survive only in fragments.