“Birth of Venus”
Happy Friday! Here is some beauty to bring in the weekend.
“Birth of Venus” or “Nascita di Venere” is a gorgeous tempera on canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance artist, Sandro Botticelli, from circa 1484 to 1486. This Renaissance depiction of classical mythology is one of the most well-known paintings of all time.
“Birth of Venus” is believed to have been commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, Italy. The orange trees that decorate the shore are the Medici family emblem. The canvas consists of two disparate pieces that were sewn together before Botticelli painted it. He used gold to embellish the colors in Venus’s hair. The inspiration for Venus’s figure is believed to be Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, who Botticelli beautifully painted in “Portrait of a Young Woman”.
As the name implies, this painting depicts the birth of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. She is shown as a full adult woman swept in from the sea, as was written in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Venus first arrived on land in Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. On the left of the canvas are Zephyr and Aura, depictions of the winds, who blew Venus onto the shore.
Venus is depicted as the ideal Renaissance beauty, with golden-red hair and pale skin. A minor goddess, the Hora of Spring, who is also Venus’s handmaid, is on the right waiting to cover the shy goddess with colorful cloth decorated with flowers. Violets, the symbol of love, are floating on the wind. Venus is standing in a scallop shell, symbolic of a woman’s vulva, as the perfect pearl. Her pose is a classical contrapposto stance, with most of her weight put on one foot, allowing her upper torso to slightly twist to a three-quarter view. She also exhibits the dramatic sloping of the shoulders, a sign of beauty in the Renaissance.
The iconography Botticelli uses has been interpreted to be based on Neo-Platonic thought. In this line of reasoning, Venus has two aspects; one of the earthly aspects where she has physical beauty, and the second of the heavenly aspect where she has intellectual beauty. Both aspects cause people to love her. This painting was meant to evoke a spiritual as well as a physical love.
A lover of beauty, Botticelli did several famous artworks depicting the goddess of love including “Primavera” and “Venus and Mars”. This painting is often thought of as the companion piece to “Primavera”.
“Birth of Venus” is currently on display at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
For more on Sandro Botticelli, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
