“The Birth of Venus,” Sandro Botticelli – overview 
- Posted by Sandro Botticelli
- Museum: Uffizi Gallery
- Year: 1483-1485
Overview of the painting :
The birth of Venus is Sandro Botticelli. Canvas, tempera. 172.5 x 278.5 cm
“The Birth of Venus,” like “Spring,” the artist wrote for Lorenzo di Pierfranco Medici. The plot of this picture is based on the myth of how the goddess of love was born from the foam of the sea. Botticelli could find a myth from ancient authors or his transfer from the poet Angelo Politiano, who worked at the court.
Venus, standing in the sink, floats, driven by Zephyr and Chlorida, and Ora, one of the companions of the goddess, who holds the veil to envelop her, is meeting her. Whimming in the wind whims of bedspreads and clothes, waves on the sea, a broken coastline, a “fried” sink sash, finally flying hair Venus – all this shades the smooth outlines of the body of the goddess and strengthens the feeling of higher harmony that causes its appearance. The hands of the characters almost close above Venus’s head, and it seems as if an arch overshadows it, which is echoed by the rounded bottom of the sink. Thus, the figure of the goddess closes into an imaginary oval. If in “Spring” the composition consists of several groups of equal meaning, then here Venus is the center to which everything aspires.
In Renaissance artists, naked Venus, as opposed to a blanket, symbolized heavenly love. Botticelli endowed his heroine with that chastity, which is revered as the highest virtue, hence the motive of worship present in the picture. The beautiful face of the heroine resembles the faces of Madonna in Botticelli’s paintings, and therefore in this work a Christian sounds through the ancient theme, and the combination of ancient humanism and Christianity gave the phenomenon of Italian Renaissance.