Art Collage JANG: Interesting Art Stories: 33. The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, ACJ Art Academy

How are you?

On every Thursday, I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the title “Interesting Art Stories”.

The 33rd story for this week is “The Birth of Venus” by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli.

Sandro Botticelli

“The Birth of Venus” is a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli in the mid-1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus born from the sea, called "Venus Anadyomene", arriving at the shore.

The Birth of Venus,
William-Adolphe Bouguerea (1879)

A Pompeian mural of Venus Anadyomene

The Birth of Venus, Alexandre Cabanel (1863)

This painting is often discussed alongside another painting by Botticelli, the “Primavera”, both of which are among the world's most famous paintings and icons of the Italian Renaissance.

Primavera, Sandro Botticelli

Commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici, this painting is virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity in the size and prominence of a nude female figure. It is very accessible and enjoys enormous popularity with its straightforward meaning and traditional scene from Greek mythology.

Lorenzo de Medici

In the center of the painting, the newly-born goddess Venus stands naked in a giant scallop shell. At the left side, Zephyr, the god of wind, is blowing wind at her, holding a young female floating in the air and blowing a much weaker wind together. Giorgio Vasari assumed her as "Aura", who personified "breeze". They blow the wind to move Venus towards the shore, and the female's hair and clothes on the right side are blown by the wind they are blowing.

Giorgio Vasari

At the right, a female, who seems to be floating slightly above the ground, is holding a cloak or clothes to cover Venus when she arrives at the shore. She is one of the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons in Greek mythology, and the floral decoration of her clothes suggests that she is the Hora of Spring.

Dionysus leading the Horae

(Neo-Attic Roman relief, 1st century)

However, the two female figures in the painting are also interpreted as other characters appearing in Botticelli’s "Primavera". The female Zephyr is holding may be Chloris, a flower nymph married to him, and the female on land may be Flora. Flora is generally equivalent to the Greek Chloris in Roman mythology.

Strictly speaking, the subject of this painting is not the "Birth of Venus", the title of the painting, but rather the next scene in her story, where she arrives on land, blown by the wind. In this painting, the land where Venus arrived might represent either Cythera or Cyprus, both Mediterranean islands that the Greeks regard as territories of Venus.

In addition to this painting, Botticelli also portrayed Venus in other paintings. The Galleria Sabauda in Turin has "Venus", which contrasted against a dark background, while partially wearing a light- blouse with a pose similar to Venus in this painting. There is another painting of Venus in Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Venus, Sandro Botticelli,

Galleria Sabauda, Turin, Italy (c.1485)

Venus, Workshop of Botticelli,

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (c.1490)

Later, Botticelli adapted the figure of Venus for a nude personification of "Truth" in his "Calumny of Apelles", in which Venus is raising one hand, pointing to heaven for justification, and the figure's gaze also looks upwards.

The Calumny of Apelles,

Sandro Botticelli (1494–95)

It is claimed that Venus in this painting was modeled after Simonetta Vespucci, who was praised as the best beauty in Italy at the time.

Simonetta Vespucci

However, this painting aroused the ire of Girolamo Savonarola, an Italian Dominican friar who attacked the fundamentalist in Florence, who liked secular tastes.

Girolamo Savonarola

As a result, one of the actions he took was the "Bonfire of the Vanities" in 1497, which burned “profane” objects such as cosmetics, artworks, books on a pyre. At the time, this painting was also scheduled for incineration, but it managed to escape destruction. Unfortunately, however, other Venus paintings by Botticelli seems to have been destroyed during the incident. Botticelli was so surprised by the incident that he even gave up painting for a while.