The Allegory of Fortitude

In December 1469, the Court of the Mercanzia in Florence, located on the Piazza della Signoria, opposite the Palace, became aware that the Court had to be completely restored, taking advantage of the "Christmas vacancy" as they used to say at the time. The courtroom itself had to be completely redone, as did the furniture. It was at that time that the seven Magistrates - there were six magistrates and a revolving presiding magistrate - decided that they wanted large chairs with high backs covered with images of the Virtues. They then had to choose the artist, and they chose Pollaiuolo, not Antonio, the great one, but his brother Piero, who spent Christmas and New Year's sketching the Virtues, which were preserved and which we shall see later. These are very good paintings, but still done in a very traditional style, very much the style of the first half of the Quatrocento.
Faith

Prudence
The robe's broken-up pleats give it a monumental character.

Justice

With her large, gleaming sword and the celestial orb, over which, like any justice, she must reign forever.

This is good painting, a little two-dimensional and a bit dull, with some Gothic influence visible in the sharp quality of the robes. As it happened, one of the Mercanzia seven was a person called Rudelai; every time Pollaiuolo delivered a Virtue, his face became longer and longer, as he considered them ugly. He took it upon himself to order the seventh and last Virtue from an artist in whom he trusted called Sandro Botticelli, whom nobody had heard of. The six other Virtues had to be seen first to better understand how first the seven Judges, and then all of Florence, were so excited about this painting.

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Fortitude
In Botticelli's work, it is true that we can see materials that really drape, models who really turn and whose stances are heroic, and, above all, it's painted with an exceptional joy of creation, right down to the last detail. It certainly sets itself completely apart from Piero de Pallaiuolo's paintings. And that was Sandro Botticelli's great stroke of luck.
 
Rudelai was so happy with his choice that he talked about it all over Florence, and all of Florence came. But what made things even better - and this would have worked just as well in the 20th century - Pollaiuolo was so enraged that he launched an interpellation. At the outset, people tended to agree with him, if only because of the contract but disagreed with him once they had seen the works. As the luckless artists had told his story to the world, everybody talked about, everybody knew about it and all of Florence came to see the work Alessandro dei Filipepi, known as Botticelli - so young, so thin and so pale. That's how it all began. It is important to have spent some time on the circumstances, as it allows us to understand the special aura that cloaked Botticelli during his lifetime: he was not only a painter, a good painter or a great painter, he was the "cherished child of the gods".
This series of successes, in particular the seventh Virtue which dominated the other six, is something so exceptional, nearly miraculous, that Botticelli picked up this famous "cherished child of the gods" epithet, which was to be a great help to him throughout his career.