This painting is a visual representation of the birth of Venus the goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility. Venus is the Roman equivalent to Aphrodite the Greek goddess of beauty. Painted by Sandro Botticelli who was an Italian renaissance artist from Florence, Italy who lived from 1445 to 1510 and painted this piece between the year 1482 and 1485. The Birth of Venus is one of the most famous paintings of all time and is Botticelli’s best known work. The painting was done with tempera and on a canvas. The piece now hangs in Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy. The Birth of Venus was painted for one of the members of the Medici family. We do not know which Medici family member order the painting or where it originally hung. The most popular …show more content…
On her right, you see a girl which is thought to be one of the hours holding a mantle that is covered in flowers to dress the goddess in. A mantle is a cloak or shawl that is loose and sleeveless worn by women mostly. When arriving to the shore she was naked, illustration of nude women was not typically done in Renaissance art. Botticelli drew inspiration for Venus’s body stance from an Aphrodite statue, Aphrodite of Cnidus, in which the goddess attempts to cover herself as a gesture of modesty. The hours are mythological handmaidens for Venus who controlled the natural cycle of the seasons. On her left is Zephras, god of the west wind while carrying the nymph he blows air to guide Venus to the shore. A mythological spirit of nature called a nymph which is pictured as a maiden living in rivers, woods, or other places in nature. The scene is peppered with violets which are a symbol of modesty but are often used in love …show more content…
The lines from Zephras’s legs and from the maiden’s right arm are drawing your attention to the goddess’s beautiful face. Venus is painted in a milky white color being a metaphor of her purity which is a contrast against her long golden hair. The goddess’s hair mirrored the way women in the late fifteenth century wore their long hair. Venus’s face was romanticized and free of blemishes. The painting reminds me of a clam, producing a pearl but instead when the shell opens there is no beautiful pearl, but within the shell is Venus the goddess of