The Birth of Venus
Stories behind Works of Art
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The Birth of Venus (ca. 1484). Sandro Botticelli
Who is the Venus of Botticelli, one of the most recognizable female figures in the history of Painting?
She is not the Goddess Venus but the woman who was considered as the most beautiful of the Renaissance and the impossible love of Botticelli: Simonetta Vespucci.
This painting is the most famous work of Botticelli and a silent love declaration to Simonetta, his muse and model, daughter of a noble Genoese, married since she was 16 to the Florentine Marco Vespucci, neighbor and friend of the painter.
Botticelli painted her in many of his paintings, the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici tried to conquer her in many opportunities, the writer Poliziano recalled her in his verses, and her fame extended form Florence to all Europe when she was proclaimed a “beauty queen” in a joust in 1475.
Simonetta died the following year, in 1476. Almost 9 years later, Botticelli finished his “Venus.” And in 1510, when the painter died, in love with her until the last moment —he never got married— he was buried at the feet of the tomb of his impossible love, as he asked in his last will.
Recommended links:
Characteristic Elements of Renaissance Painting.
Botticelli and the Return to Mythology.
Timeline: The Four Greatest Painters of the Italian Renaissance.
Fra Filippo Lippi, Teacher of Botticelli.
The Madonnas of Botticelli and the Differences with those of Raphael.
The Birth of Venus (1879) by Bouguereau.
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