Painted in the 1480s for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus(ca. 1486)took its theme from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”
Painted in the 1480s for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus(ca. 1486)took its theme from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” One of the most iconic images in all of Western art, Botticelli’s painting reinterprets an ancient Greek statue of Venus in a Neoplatonic mode, depicting a nude female body as an allegory of both physical and divine beauty. Incorporating traces of real gold in Venus’s hair, the work exemplifies the Golden Age of Quattrocento painting.