Sweet Serendipity, or The Painting that Launched a Career

Botticelli completed the painting Fortitude, also referred to as the Allegory of Fortitude, in 1470, when he was just 25 years old.  It is the Renaissance master’s first recorded work, commissioned by the Tribunale della Mercatanzia (a court where crimes of an economic nature were judged), as part of a series called The Seven Virtues. The judges…