The Birth of Venus: A Painting by Sandro Botticelli
A world-famous painting in which myth predominates over realism
Sandro Botticelli (c1445–1510) was born in Florence and spent most of his life there. Many of his paintings have devotional subjects and were designed for specific settings in churches and other religious buildings. But he was also the first painter of the Renaissance to use classical myths as central subject matter in his work.
The Birth of Venus, which dates from the mid-1480s, was almost certainly created for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco to be displayed in his Villa di Costello near Florence.
Botticelli was unaffected by the passion for realism that was current in his day. In The Birth of Venus he makes little attempt to persuade us of the reality of the scene, but we are completely convinced that we are witness to a splendid moment in the world of ancient myth.
Legend tells us that Venus, the Roman goddess of love and fertility, was born from sea-foam, and here she is seen slowly floating on her shell-boat into the shore. Her journey is aided by two intertwined figures, male and female, representing the winds. The male, Zephyr, the west wind of springtime, supports the female, who is probably Flora, his wife. Just where the sea touches the shore, a young woman adorned with…
