Simonetta was possibly born in the Ligurian seaside town of Portovenere ('the port of Venus'). One of the most iconic paintings in the entire art history and the image which takes a significant place in popular culture as well is The Birth of Venus painted by Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli in the mid-1480s.This impressive mythological composition is centered on the introduction of the figure of the bare naked goddess Venus emerging from the shell drifting to Cyprus … The picture is painted on canvas a less expensive alternative to a wooden support, this would suggest that the Venus was intended for a less formal setting than a Palace. The theme was probably suggested by the humanist Poliziano. Napoleon's booty — Perugino's (gorgeous) Decemviri Altarpiece. It was painted with tempera on canvas, a popular and cheap choice for secular work. .... She is not standing but floating. In particular, both Primavera and Birth of Venus have been seen as wedding paintings that suggest appropriate behaviors for brides and grooms. Botticelli created Birth of Venus in about 1484 in Florence, Italy, the lustrous cradle of Renaissance art. 1484. Although it now seems that the painting was executed for another member of the Medici family, it likely was intended to celebrate and flatter its head, Lorenzo de' Medici. Hemsoll, 13:40; Hartt, 333, Clark, 97 quoted; see also Ettlingers, 134, Clark, 92, 96–97; Lightbown, 160, "the first surviving celebration of the beauty of the female nude represented for its own perfection rather than with erotic or moral or religious overtones. The "House of Venus" in Pompeii has a life-size fresco of Venus lying in the shell, also seen in other works; in most other images she stands with her hands on her hair, wringing the water from it, with or without a shell. The Birth of Venus Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici Fashion and a Portrait of a Young Woman Dissecting Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi Perugino, Decemviri Altarpiece Piero della Francesca The Baptism of Christ Flagellation of Christ Resurrection Piero … The composition, with a central nude figure, and one to the side with an arm raised above the head of the first, and winged beings in attendance, would have reminded its Renaissance viewers of the traditional iconography of the Baptism of Christ, marking the start of his ministry on earth. Ignoring the size and positioning of the wings and limbs of the flying pair on the left, which bother some other critics, Kenneth Clark calls them: ...perhaps the most beautiful example of ecstatic movement in the whole of painting. ‘Birth of Venus’ is a portrait series of young girls, inspired by the famous Venus painting by Botticelli. The seascape, stunning for its metaphysical tone and almost unreal quality, is illuminated by a very soft, delicate light. ... the suspension of our reason is achieved by the intricate rhythms of the drapery which sweep and flow irresistibly around the nude figures. Birth of Venus was engraved by Léopold Flameng and published in the Gazette des beaux-arts in December 1863. According to Pliny, Alexander the Great offered his mistress, Campaspe, as the model for the nude Venus and later, realizing that Apelles had fallen in love with the girl, gave her to the artist in a gesture of extreme magnanimity. Sarah Dunant, the British bestselling novelist, has penned a delectable and extremely tempting historical fiction, The Birth of Venus that is set against the backdrop of the Renaissance Florence and that which revolves around a young 14 year old girl who is not beautiful or skilled like her elder sister, yet her talent and eye for art and mind for translating languages is extraordinary but with … In Sandro Botticelli: Mythological paintings 1485), and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485). "Birth of Venus" (1485). A second and smaller version (85 x 135.9 cm) from ca. It is for this reason that the humanist Ugolino Verino in his work Epigrammata, presented in 1485 to the King of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, likened the Florentine painter to the legendary Apelles of Ancient Greece. Like its fellow terrestrial planets, Venus has a central core, a rocky mantle and a solid crust. On the left, the figure of Zephyrus carries the nymph Chloris (alternatively identified as Aura) as he blows the wind to guide Venus. It is not clear about the exact date or year of the creation of the painting and is generally believed to be done in the 1480s. Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, c. 1485, tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). The painting shows the triumphant Goddess of … [45], These essentially pagan readings of Botticelli's Birth of Venus should not exclude a more purely Christian one, which may be derived from the Neoplatonic reading of the painting indicated above. But the beauty of Venus—the pagan goddess of love and the main subject of the painting—never fails to amaze its audience no matter how many times they look at this magnum opus. The Birth of Venus, tempera on canvas by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485; in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. [21] There is no record of the original commission, and the painting is first mentioned by Vasari, who saw it, together with the Primavera, at Castello, some time before the first edition of his Lives in 1550, probably by 1530–40. Venus is incredibly beautiful. Botticelli The Birth of Venus – What is the meaning? Examples seem to have been exported to France and Germany, probably influencing Lucas Cranach the Elder among others. 1864 is in Dahesh Museum of Art. The Birth of Venus (Nascita di Venere) by Sandro Botticelli generally thought to have been painted in the mid 1480s. The Birth of Venus (French: Naissance de Venus) is a painting by the French artist Alexandre Cabanel. Shop for birth of venus art from the world's greatest living artists. This picture decayed from age and rottenness, and Nero ... substituted for it another painting by the hand of Dorotheus".[40]. 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