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Venus is the goddess of beauty and love. She is the only deity who had no mother or father. She was born in the ocean when Saturn castrated his father Caelus (the Roman version of Uranus) His sperm mixed with the water and from the foam sprung Venus, full grown. The wind Zephyr blew her to shore and the Hour of Spring attended her. Venus married the smith god Vulcan and was mother to Cupid and Aeneas (founder of Rome)

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Be-Br/Botticelli-Sandro.html

About the Artist

            Sandro Botticelli was born in 1444 or 1445 in a wealthy neighborhood in Florence.  His father, Mariano di Vanni, was a tanner.  Botticelli’s full name was Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi.  Botticelli was in training to become goldsmith, like his elder brother Antonio, but after he finished his training at 18 he began a painting apprenticeship with Fra Filippo Lippi, a famous Florentine artist.  Botticelli studied with Lippi for about five years. His first dated work was the Fortitude painted in 1470, the year he set up his own workshop in Florence.  There he painted for the unofficial ruler of Florence; Lorenzo de Medici and his family.  The Medici was an important banking family who unofficially ruled Florence.  In 1482 Botticelli painted the Birth of Venus for Lorenzo the Magnificent’s second cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.  After the Medici’s expulsion from Florence and the rise of Savonarola in 1494, Botticelli’s work became more and more religious; such religious fervor is evident in the Mystical Nativity (1510).  Savonarola was a Dominican monk, who preached against the Renaissance and believed that to save the people their material possessions must be burned.  Botticelli was a strong supporter of the monk and burned some of his own art on Savonarola’s bonfires.  Though Savonarola was executed in 1498, Botticelli never returned to his pagan themes again. Botticelli died in 1510 at the age of 65. Only about fifty of his paintings remain today.

    Botticelli had been working independently, with his own workshop for twelve years before he painted the famous Birth of Venus. The painting was commissioned by the head of the ruling Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent, for his second cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. The painting is 68 by 110 inches and is tempera on canvas. The painting was influenced by the Venus di Medici (pictured on right) and by Homer and Hesiod's ancient poetry. Many scholars have likened the painting to a mural done in Pompeii though Botticelli never saw it.

     The painting hung in Pierfrancesco's villa next to the Primavera and Pallas and the Centaur.

shot.holycross.edu/courses/GrSculpture/S06/review

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Analysis

          Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is one of the most famous paintings of the Renaissance. It not only embodies all that the great thinkers in Florence stood for, but stands for the values of the Renaissance itself. The Birth of Venus is Botticelli’s greatest masterpiece and the painting that symbolizes the classical values of the Renaissance.

        The Birth of Venus emphasizes the divinity of the goddess by the reoccurrence of gold and the strange statue like quality of Venus. The grove of trees in the right side of the painting are covered in white flowers tipped in gold, and the wings of the wind god Zephyr are outlined in gold. Gold is a symbol of precious objects and divinity. Venus stands in the middle of the picture normally a spot reserved for the Virgin Mary. Botticelli emphasizes Venus’s godliness and individualism by outlining the contours of her body with a black line, causing them to stand out and give her clarity¹. Individualism was an important Renaissance value.  By giving Venus a face that is similar yet different from any other face he has painted.  He also makes her seem special by putting her apart from all the other figures.  Also evident in the painting are the ideas of Neoplatism. Both Botticelli and Lorenzo believed in Neoplatism which is an idea bridging the classical gods and the Christian God. Venus can be eluded to baptism and to pure, sacred love.

Botticelli used Late Gothic styling in that he was more interested in the fluid grace of the painting, than of it being realistic.  The seashell on which Venus stands is too large, and the sea shore in the background is much too small. Venus herself is completely out of proportion, she impossibly tall, her shoulders tilt to one side and her neck is much too long.

           The Birth of Venus is Botticelli’s masterpiece because it truly embodies the values of the Renaissance elite in Florence.  If Lorenzo the Magnificent was the unofficial prince of Florence then Botticelli was the Court painter of Florence.  Four famous paintings Botticelli painted for Lorenzo were Pallas and the Centaur, Primavera, Mars and Venus and the Birth of Venus. All four paintings contain pagan characters and the idea of pure and sensual love.  In the three paintings, Mars and Venus, Pallas and the Centaur and Primavera, the main female character stands for the ideal of chastity and sacred love.  What makes the Birth of Venus a masterpiece is that Venus embraces her role as a classical goddess, instead of covering up her sexuality and divinity as in the other three paintings.  It is the first time that Venus is shown in her classical form since the time of the Roman Empire.²

¹Barbara Deimling, Botticelli, (Germany, Taschen, 2000) 52

² "Botticelli, Sandro"  The Dictionary of Art , 1996 ed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abt.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism#Renaissance_Neoplatonism