Portrait of a Young Woman by Botticelli

In Portrait of a Young Woman, a fine cord is knotted at the girl’s throat which disappears into the neck-line of her dress, from which a sacred image presumably hangs.

Portrait of a Young Woman

This detail combined with the complete lack of jewelry suggests that she is a maiden. There is greater insistence on the stylization of the features, more intensely rhythmic qualities in the one woven into an elaborate counterpoint of harmonic variations.

The delicate and supple skin is eternally young. No imperfection whatsoever disgraces this ethereal beauty.
Portrait of a Young Woman by Botticelli

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. The painting was executed in the middle of the 1480s.

The painting was believed to have been attempt by Botticelli to recreate the Anadyomene Venus, a lost painting acclaimed by ancient tradition as the work of the ingenuous Greek painter Apelles.

The Birth of Venus

In the painting, Venus is standing in the center of the picture on a seashell floating in the water; according to classical mythology, she sprang from the foaming waters of the sea. She attempts to cover herself, partially using her long golden hair. Her nude form, though, is considered one of the most sensuously beautiful figures of the Renaissance.
The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus

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