The Birth Of Venus Botticelli

Besides creating an incredible image of traditional religious women with wisdom, Botticelli also presented his skills of rendering perfect female beauty in his secular paintings. Birth of Venus (1484-86), tempera on canvas, is one of Botticelli’s most famous mythological works. The presentation of the birth of Venus, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, is an allegory of the birth of beauty in the mind of humanity arriving in Florence (Hartt, p. 340). On the center of the canvas, Venus, in contrapposto, is standing on the front edge of a shell. She is rising up from the foams of the sea. She is covering her genital with her long, soft, seaweed-like blonde hair. Her face is bright and smooth. She is looking away to her right side. As a symbol of beauty, Venus was painted beautifully with elegance and grace.

156) . On her left, there is a waiting nymph Hour, one of Venus’s traditional attendant. She is welcoming Venus with a pink, floral robe (Hartt, p. 340). There is a laurel on Hour’s neck, seemingly to be one of the Medici family’s symbols, indicates that the painting is executed for Lorenzo de Medici, the young Medic in reign (Hartt, p. 340). On the right of Venus, there is the god of wind, Zephyr. He is blowing out pink daisies in the air along with his wife Chloris (Zollner, p.135). On the background, there is orange trees foliage and an endless greenish blue sea with beautiful foams created by simple but fluid white lines. The picture is beautiful and graceful with flowers fluttering around in the air. It is very well-balanced with the nudity of Venus in the centre and her attendants on both sides of her. Venus’s bright and flawless body in the centre highlights the whole scene, giving the picture an incredible sense of