The Birth of Venus
Visual poetry Sandra Botticelli (1444-510) remains among the best known of the artists who produces works for the Medici.
One of the works he painted in tempera on canvas for the Medici was his famous Birth of Venus. A poem on that theme by Angelo Poliziano one of the leading humanist of the day, inspired Botticelli to create this lyrical image.
Zephyrus (the west wind) blows Venus, born of the sea foam and carried on a cockle shell, to her sacred island, Cyprus. There, the nymph Pomona runs to meet her with a brocaded mantle. The lightness and bodilessness of the winds move all the figures without efforts.
The artist’s use especially on such a large scale of an ancient Venus statue of the Venus pudica (modest Venus) type - a Hellenistic variant of Praxiteles’ famous Aphrodite of Knidos – as a model could have drawn the charge of paganism and infidelity.
But in the more accommodating Renaissance culture and under the protection of the powerful Medici, the depiction went unchallenged.
The Birth of Venus
Visual poetry Sandra Botticelli (1444-510) remains among the best known of the artists who produces works for the Medici.
One of the works he painted in tempera on canvas for the Medici was his famous Birth of Venus. A poem on that theme by Angelo Poliziano one of the leading humanist of the day, inspired Botticelli to create this lyrical image.
Zephyrus (the west wind) blows Venus, born of the sea foam and carried on a cockle shell, to her sacred island, Cyprus. There, the nymph Pomona runs to meet her with a brocaded mantle. The lightness and bodilessness of the winds move all the figures without efforts.
The artist’s use especially on such a large scale of an ancient Venus statue of the Venus pudica (modest Venus) type - a Hellenistic variant of Praxiteles’ famous Aphrodite of Knidos – as a model could have drawn the charge of paganism and infidelity.
But in the more accommodating Renaissance culture and under the protection of the powerful Medici, the depiction went unchallenged.
The Birth of Venus
