Birth of Venus

Birth of Venus, painting by Sandro Botticelli completed about 1485.

Birth of Venus is one of the most famous paintings in the world. It was painted by Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli, who was an Italian painter of the Florentine School that emerged in the early Renaissance period. After training as a goldsmith, he served an apprenticeship under Fra Filippo Lippi, the best Florentine painter of that time. Botticelli made his name with his painting Allegory of Fortitude (1470), and he was subsequently commissioned to paint Birth of Venus for Lorenzo the Magnificent (or possibly a cousin, the banker Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, called “il Popolano” ) of the Medici family. In mythology, Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the god Uranus, whose severed genitals fertilized the sea.

Birth of Venus depicts the moment described by the Roman poet Ovid when, having emerged from the sea in a shell, Venus lands at Paphos in Cyprus. She is attended by Zephyrus, the gentle wind of spring, and the nymph Aura, who blow her toward the shore, while a figure possibly representing Flora, the goddess of spring, is poised to wrap a cloak, decorated with spring flowers, around Venus to cover her nudity. The stance of Venus is believed to be based on classical statuary, which was highly prized in Florence at that time, and in particular on an ancient Greek statue of Venus in the Medici collection. Despite the unusual proportions of her body—the elongated neck and her overlong left arm—Venus is an arrestingly beautiful figure with her delicate skin and soft-flowing curls fresh from the sea. She is born to the world as the goddess of beauty, and the viewer is witness to this act of creation. She steps off a gilded scallop shell, the winds shower her with roses—each with a golden heart—and the orange blossom on the tree behind her is also tipped with gold. Historically, this is the most important depicted nude since classical antiquity.

Apart from its artistic quality, Birth of Venus is noteworthy for having been the first known Tuscan work of art to be painted on canvas, which is now standard but was then revolutionary, with paintings customarily done on more expensive wood panels. It was restored in 1987 to heighten the bright vividness of the painting as it first appeared, an effect achieved by the use of lustrous alabaster powder and gold leaf. A touchstone of the Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement of the 19th century and much imitated and parodied, Birth of Venus is a canonical work of Western art.