The birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus (in Italian, La Nascita di Venere) is a painting by the Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, one of the masterpieces of the Florentine master and of the Italian Quattrocento. It is executed in tempera on canvas and measures 278.5 cm wide by 172.5 cm high. It is kept in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, where it is exhibited in room 10-14, called "de Botticelli" (Inv. 1890 n. 878).
This painting was in its time a revolutionary work in that it openly presented a nude not justified by any religious component, as well as a mythological theme from classical Greco-Roman culture prior to Christianity, which implied full acceptance —at least by the cultural elites—of the new Renaissance humanism away from medieval obscurantism. Its iconographic interpretation is linked to the Florentine Platonic Academy, an intellectual circle sponsored by the Medici family that developed both in the field of philosophy and literature and art. The meaning of the work is therefore related to Neoplatonism and the formulation by Marsilio Ficino of an idealized concept of love where the figure of Venus unfolds into two complementary versions, the celestial Venus and the earthly Venus, which symbolize spiritual love and love. material love, a theory derived from Plato's The Banquet.
On the other hand, the inspiration for the theme represented by Botticelli can be found in literary sources such as the classic works of Ovid and, especially, Angelo Poliziano, a member of the Florentine Academy who in his work Stanze per la Giostra (1494) described in verse the birth of Venus. It should be noted that this work was dedicated to glossing over the impossible love professed by the noble Giuliano de' Medici for the beautiful and virtuous Simonetta Vespucci, who was the model for the figure of Venus. Traditionally it was believed that the commission for the painting had come from Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, according to a comment made by the Renaissance historian Giorgio Vasari, but there is no documentary evidence of this fact, so today it is unknown. the patron of the painting as well as the exact date of its realization.
History
The author
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, nicknamed Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445-ibid., 1510) was a painter of the Italian Quattrocento, a member of the so-called "second Florentine generation", after the first formed by Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno and Filippo Lippi; among his co-religionists in this second generation, Benozzo Gozzoli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, the brothers Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio and Piero di Cosimo stood out. These artists generally show a sumptuous and refined style, with a certain influence from Flemish painting, which is denoted by a bourgeois taste in detail and the specific aspects of life, tempered by a classicism inherent in the Italian pictorial tradition.
He was a disciple of Filippo Lippi, whose influence can be seen in his early works. However, due to his temperament, he framed himself in a style derived from the Italian thirteenth century Gothic —the so-called Italian-Gothic style—, as opposed to the scientific naturalism led by Masaccio. This style was based on the preponderance of line and drawing over color, as well as a stylized and sentimental touch, feminine grace and a certain mannerism. Virtually all of his professional life was spent in Florence, except for his participation in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome between 1481 and 1482, in collaboration with Perugino, Cosimo Rosselli and Ghirlandaio. Between 1478 and 1485 he produced, probably commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, three works based on classical Greco-Roman mythology: Spring (c. 1478), Pallas and the Centaur (c. 1482-1483) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1482-1485), all kept in the Uffizi. In these works, he developed an iconographic content linked to the Neoplatonic philosophy developed at the Florentine Platonic Academy at the initiative of Cosme de' Medici, made up of philosophers, artists and writers such as Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Cristoforo Landino, Leon Battista Alberti and Angelo Poliziano.. His later works moved away from paganism and became more serious and rigorous, probably under the influence of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola. At the time he was the most popular painter in Florence, but after 1500 —coinciding with the return to the city of Leonardo da Vinci— his linear style fell out of fashion and, after his death, his work fell into oblivion, until his figure was recovered by the Pre-Raphaelites in the mid-XIX century.
Botticelli's early style was marked by a linear fluidity combined with a plastic firmness derived from Verrocchio, as denoted in his virgins, most notable of which is the Madonna with the Rose Bush (c 1468, Uffizi). His series of mythological paintings for the Medici —starting with Primavera— is marked by spatial balance and a greater formal consistency influenced by Piero Pollaiuolo. With his collaboration in the Sistine Chapel, his "classical" phase began, in which he achieved a full balance between naturalistic composition and a certain formal abstraction. However, already in The Birth of Venus a certain rhythmic tension is perceived, which is accentuated in later works such as Virgin and Saints (1485, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Virgin of the Granada (1487, Uffizi) and the Altarpiece of Saint Mark (1490, Uffizi). His later works, marked by a new religious passion influenced by Savonarola, show a more broken rhythm and a more restless sensibility, as in The Calumny of Apelles (1495, Uffizi). His latest works are already completely archaic, outside the artistic environment of his time: Mystical Nativity (1501, The National Gallery, London), Crucifixion (c. 1500-1505, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge).
The painting
It has traditionally been believed that this work, like Spring, was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, to grace the Villa di Castello in the Florentine countryside. The idea stems from the fact that it was there that Giorgio Vasari contemplated them years later. Recent studies indicate otherwise: Spring was painted for Lorenzo's house in the city of Florence and The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different location. Therefore, the exact date of its composition is not known, nor is the principal for whom it was executed. Currently it is considered that it must have been painted between 1482 and 1485; in any case, after Botticelli's stay in Rome.
This painting was revolutionary in its time, as it was the first large-format work with an exclusively mythological theme, as well as a nude, something still not entirely well regarded by the prevailing morality of the time.
According to most sources, the model for Venus was Simonetta Cattaneo, married Simonetta Vespucci (c. 1453-1476), a young woman of great beauty, who died prematurely at twenty-three of tuberculosis. At the age of sixteen, she married Marco Vespucci, who introduced her to the circle of the Florentine nobility, where she caused great admiration. She was a model for numerous artists, such as Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo or Domenico Ghirlandaio, in such a way that she became the prototype of beauty of the quattrocentista Renaissance. Botticelli portrayed her, in addition to The Birth of Venus, in Spring (as the goddess Flora), Pallas and the Centaur (as Pallas), Venus and Mars (as Venus), The Calumny of Apelles (the Truth), Virgin of the Pomegranate and in the Virgin of the Magnificat, as well as some figures from the Trials of Moses in the Sistine Chapel, as well as a posthumous portrait (c. 1476-1480, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).
The painting was in the Villa di Castello until 1815, when it was deposited in the Uffizi Gallery. It was restored in 1987, when a layer of varnish was removed, giving it a yellowish tone.
Description
Literary sources
The literary sources of this work are Ovid (The metamorphoses, II 27; Fasti, V 217) and Angelo Poliziano (Stanze per la Giostra, 1494). In addition, in Florence at the time there was a memory of a legendary painting by the Greek Apelles, entitled Venus Anadiomena and that Poliziano describes in a poem, inspired by a Homeric passage that, according to Pliny, narrated the birth of the goddess. Another source could be the anonymous poem Pervigilium Veneris (ii or iii), which describes the arrival of Venus in Sicily. In his Theogony, Hesiod also speaks of Aphrodite Anadiomene («risen from the waters»), the fruit of the union between the sky and the water.
The theme was probably taken from some lines in Stanze per la Giostra by Poliziano (99-101):
In the bosom of the tempestuous Aegean / sees Tetis with the lumped belly [...] err by the waves in white foam wrapped / and within born with delicate and joyful movements / a maiden with a nonhuman face / Of lascivious céfiros pushed to the shore / Tour on a shell and it seems that the sky enjoys with it [...] The goddess tightens with the right the scalp / with the other the sweet pomo coats [...] Of three nymphs in the breast was received / and in starry dress wrapped.
In his work, Poliziano narrated the tournament held on January 29, 1475 to celebrate the alliance between Florence, Milan and Venice. Giuliano de Médici, the younger brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, participated in this tournament, who commissioned Botticelli to make a banner. In this type of banners it was customary to capture a type of allegorical images that were difficult to interpret, generally dedicated to secret love affairs, a tradition from medieval troubadour literature. Apparently, Giuliano was in love with Simonetta, a young woman who exemplified the type of woman praised by Petrarch, who combined beauty with moral qualities; Although her fidelity to her husband was famous, Giuliano gave himself up to an impossible love that, after all, was the paradigm of courtly love. On his banner, Botticelli painted a female figure dressed in a gold-embroidered white tunic, alluding to Pallas Athena. She was perched on some burning olive branches and was wearing a helmet, a spear and a shield with the head of Medusa. Behind her was an olive tree with the figure of Cupid tied to the tree with gold threads, with his broken bow and arrows at her feet. At the top was the legend la sans par ("the one without equal") written in gold Gothic letters. The symbolism is clear: Pallas represents Simonetta, dressed in a white tunic as a symbol of chastity, and whose armor protects her from the arrows of love. The legend of the two lovers was magnified by their tragic end in their youth: Simonetta died of tuberculosis and Giuliano murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy.
Iconography
According to legend, Venus (Aphrodite in Greek mythology), goddess of love, was born from the genitals of the god Uranus, cut off by his son Saturn and then thrown into the sea. The title of the work is not, therefore, exact, since the painting does not represent the moment of the birth of the goddess, but shows the arrival of Venus, on a shell, on the beach of one of the islands that traditionally are dedicated to him, like Cyprus, Paphos or Cytherea. According to the myth, the goddess was carried by Zephyr, god of the west wind, to land, and welcomed by the Horas, the goddesses of the seasons, who clothed her and led her to the abode of the gods. Thus, Botticelli omits the event. gruesome castration and focuses on the emergence of the goddess of the sea and her arrival on land driven by the winds, amid a shower of flowers that symbolize the fertilization of the sea by the sky.
In the scene depicted by Botticelli, Cefiro appears on the left blowing a breath of wind into Venus. He carries in her arms Chloris (Flora in Roman mythology), the goddess of flowers and gardens, wife of Zephyr, and they are surrounded by flowers that seem to fall from the sky. They are roses, the flower of love, created according to myth at the same time as the goddess. According to another interpretation, instead of Chloris it could be Aura, the goddess of the breeze. In the center Venus appears nude on a shell, symbol of fertility. Beside him, in the lower left corner, some sea reeds appear, in the middle of some V-shaped waves. To the right appears one of the Hours, surely Spring, which spreads a purple mantle to cover the newborn goddess. She wears a flowery, white dress embroidered with cornflowers. A belt of roses surrounds her waist and on her neck she wears an elegant garland of myrtle, a sacred plant of Venus and a symbol of eternal love. Between her feet a blue anemone blooms, which is related to the arrival of spring. The trees in the background are orange, streaked with golden flowers and thorns, mimicking the color of Venus's hair.
The landscape in the background is merely decorative, the important thing in the image are the figures, arranged as a frieze. This sensation is reinforced by the lack of depth offered by the painting, which looks like a collage with a flat background and superimposed figures. The waves of the sea give the impression of a carpet more than sea waves, and the trees on the right are out of proportion to the figures. In terms of chromaticism, the blue-green tones of the sky and sea contrast with the pale tones of the figures, while the golden touches scattered throughout the painting provide light to the environment.
The posture of Venus mimics that of classical Greco-Roman statuary, a nod from the painter to tradition that would no doubt be recognized by the most erudite viewer. The figure is shifted slightly to the right, so that the weight falls on the left leg, a position known in classical art as contrapposto. With her right hand she covers her breasts, while with the left holds a mop of her long blonde hair that covers her groin. This posture is reminiscent of that of the Venus Pudica, a frequent typology in classical statuary, such as the Aphrodite of Cnidos, the Capitoline Venus, the Aphrodite of Menophantus or the Venus de Medici. Her facial features, like those of most of the characters portrayed by the artist, stand out for their fine noses, pronounced cheekbones and strong jaws, highlighting the bone structure of the figures.
Not since the days of classical Rome had this pagan goddess been represented naked and of such dimensions. The female nude, considered sinful in medieval Christian art, was recovered in the Renaissance as a symbol of immateriality. In keeping with the Neoplatonism of the Florentine Academy, this Venus does not represent carnal love or sensual pleasure but, with her posture and fine features, she is closer to the ideal of pure intelligence or supreme knowledge, or moral truth or metaphysics. According to this philosophy, beauty is an attribute of divinity, which is why the representation of Venus is comparable to that of the Virgin Mary.
This work has often been read in a Neoplatonic key. Based on a second legend that made Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus and Dione, Plato, in The Banquet, imagined the existence of two Aphrodites: the one born from Uranus (Heaven) would be Aphrodite Urania (celestial)., which would represent pure and spiritual love, while Dione's daughter would be Aphrodite Pandemos (popular), which would mean vulgar, material love. This differentiation between two Venus as personifications of two types of love was picked up by the Florentine Academy, in which environment Botticelli was immersed. Marsilio Ficino, one of the main theorists of the school, recovered the figure of Venus as a model of virtues and mystical exaltation, and opposed the two figures of Venus as symbols of what is divine and what is earthly in women., already in the Primavera Botticelli picked up this idea, where the represented figures would symbolize the circuit of love, from the earthly one represented by Zephyr to the celestial one symbolized by Mercury. Similarly, in The Birth of Venus, the central figure would be that of the celestial Venus, engendered by the union between spirit and matter.
In line with these theories, in The Birth of Venus Botticelli symbolized the dichotomy between matter and spirit with the light-dark contrast: on the left side of the painting the light corresponds to dawn (Cefiro was son of Aurora, the goddess of dawn), while on the right side, darker, the earth and the forest are located, as metaphorical elements of matter. Venus is in the center, between day and night, between the sea and the land, between the divine and the human.
On the other hand, Giulio Carlo Argan (Botticelli, 1957) pointed out a possible agreement between classical mythology and Christian religion: thus, the figure of Venus would represent the Christian soul emerging from the water of baptism. In fact, the compositional similarity between this work and The Baptism of Christ by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1475-1478, Uffizi) has been pointed out on occasion., Ernst Gombrich (Botticelli's Mythologies, 1945) identified this work as the birth of Humanitas, of humanity, an embodiment of the new Renaissance humanism.
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The full interpretation of this painting depends on its relationship with Spring. According to Erwin Panofsky (Renaissance and Renaissance in Western Art, 1975), in both works the figure of Venus occupies the central place, although one is nude (Birth) and the other clothed (Spring), and represent the two poles of this mythical figure: in the Birth the celestial Venus is represented and in the Spring the Venus vulgar. Contrary to what it might seem, it is the celestial one that is shown naked, because her beauty is pure and of supernatural origin. Titian made the same contrast in Sacred Love and Profane Love (1515, Borghese Gallery, Rome). Another correspondence, pointed out by Edgar Wind (The Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, 1972), is the presence of the Spring Hour ready to cover the goddess with a cloak, which would be equivalent to hiding the true pure beauty and naked; once covered, she transforms into the vulgar Venus that appears in the Spring . Ultimately, one is a reflection of the other, bodily beauty as a reflection of spiritual beauty, human love as a reflection of divine love.
Some art historians such as Gombrich (op. cit.) and André Chastel (Art and Humanism in Florence at the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 1991) have pointed out likewise its agreement with the Catholic religion, derived from the attempt of the Florentine Academy to combine Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine. Ficino came to equate Plato with God the Father and Plotinus as his son his Christ. Thus, Botticelli's mythological works would also reflect values proper to sacred art, through a transfer of types that would link profane images with those of religious worship. According to these scholars, the birth of Venus could be related to the baptism of Christ, while the Garden of Love would be equivalent to the earthly Paradise. Panofsky also points out the resemblance of the Venus of Spring to a Virgin of the Annunciation. In any case, the resemblance of numerous Botticellian virgins to mythological goddesses is undeniable, also starting from the fact that the model for both types was Simonetta Vespucci on several occasions.
Technique and style
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The painting is made in tempera on canvas. In general, in his easel works, he prepared the surface with white from Spain and powdered white, bound together with carpenter's glue. On this basis, he executed the guidelines of the composition (perspective, architecture) by incision with a stylus and later outlined the lines and contours of figures and objects with a brush, with a very liquid dark ink. He then applied the color in successive layers, separated with a parchment glue varnish. Finally, he applied some glazes with casein tempera, with which he executed the last shots, such as landscapes and so on.
Some studies have indicated that the work may be mutilated by 30 or 35 cm at the top. Thus, the original height of the painting could have been the same as Spring and Pallas and the Centaur, which would reinforce the hypothesis of a single commission for these three works.
In this work, Botticelli moved away from the realistic description to prioritize the allegorical sense of the work. Thus, he dispensed with perspective and distorted the forms, especially in terms of the stylization of the figures. Nature is idealized, converted into a decorative setting that seeks more aesthetics, the ideal of beauty, than the embodiment of a real nature. On the other hand, the figure of Venus has an absent, nostalgic air, evoking an irretrievably lost golden age, the classical age so evoked by the Neoplatonists.
For this work, he was inspired by the few remains of classical works that he had within his reach, some sarcophagi, jewels, reliefs, ceramics and drawings, and created an archetype of beauty that would be identified as the classical ideal of beauty since the Renaissance. In La primavera, he recovered the genre of draperie mouillée that he repeated in The Birth, with fine semi-transparent fabrics that reveal the outline of the body, with a sense of classicism coming from the paintings of Pompeii and Herculaneum or the stuccos of Prima Porta and Hadrian's Villa. However, Botticelli moved away from the volumetric character of the classical nude, with fragile and slender figures that responded more to the modern concept of the human body, while his faces are more personal and humanized than the ideal classical prototypes. In The Birth of Venus, painted after his stay in Rome, where he painted his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, he showed a purer classicism, thanks to his contact with the Roman antiquities present in the city of the popes.. Thus, his Venus is already stripped of all clothing and any type of moralistic constraint, definitively abandoning medieval art to fully enter modernity.
The figure of Venus, despite the classicism of the composition, responds more to Gothic criteria, not so much in terms of proportions, but in rhythm and structure: its curved shape means that the figure is not evenly distributed, but rather the weight it falls further to the right, and the wavy movement of its outline and hair gives the impression that it is floating in the air. Despite her slender proportions, some parts of her body are out of proportion: her neck is too long, her shoulders are sloping, and her right arm is longer than normal. Despite everything, her figure shows an undeniable grace and harmony, which is why she became the prototype of the beauty of her time.
Regarding the Gothicism of the figure of Venus, it should be noted that Botticelli may have had a reference in the Temperance statue in the pulpit of the cathedral of Pisa, a work by Giovanni Pisano from around 1300- 1310. This figure is a clear example of Venus Pudica, undoubtedly copied from classical sculptures, which covers her private parts with her arms, and is one of the few existing links between classical and Renaissance art on the subject of the mythological nude.
Influence on other artists
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Botticelli's Venus was a great success in its day and her figure was reproduced in numerous works both in the artist's own studio and by other artists. Two copies are kept from Botticelli's workshop, one in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and the other in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. The success of this work even led to its export to other countries, especially France and Germany. His influence is denoted in works such as the oil painting of Venus and Cupid by the German Lucas Cranach the Elder from 1509 (Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), life-size and the first of several works produced by Cranach with Venus as the protagonist, usually accompanied by Cupid, and which combines the influence of the Italian Renaissance with the religion and morality of German humanism, being the first painting of a nude Venus made by an artist from northern Europe.
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