The woman is shown in profile but with her bust turned in three-quarter view to reveal a cameo medallion she is wearing around her neck.

The medallion in the painting is a copy in reverse of "Nero's Seal", a famous antique carnelian representing Apollo and Marsyas, which belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici.

Other similar Botticelli paintings are to be found in the National Gallery, London, the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and in the Marubeni Collection, Tokyo.

[4] The art historian Aby Warburg first suggested the painting was an idealised portrait of Simonetta Vespucci.

This challenged a previous interpretation, put forward by German scholars, according to which the painting describes an ideally beautiful young woman mythologised as a nymph or goddess, a view reflected in the title given it by the Städel.