There are few paintings that are as stunning and intricate as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Painted for the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello, the artwork is probably the most famous Renaissance piece today, with the exception of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
In the quest for balance and perfection, Botticelli was among the Florentine artists of the second half of the fifteenth century who strove for a solution to this question. One of his most famous pictures represents not a Christian legend but a classical myth - the birth of Venus. The classical poets had been known all through the Middle Ages, but only at the time of the Renaissance, when the Italians tried so passionately to recapture the former glory of Rome, did the classical myths become popular among educated laymen. To these men, the mythology of the admired Greeks and Romans represented something more than gay and pretty fairy-tales. They were so convinced of the superior wisdom of the ancients that they believed these classical legends must contain some profound and mysterious truth. The patron who commissioned the Botticelli painting for his country villa was a member of the rich and powerful family of the Medici. Either he himself, or one of his learned friends, probably explained to the painter what was known of the way the ancients had represented Venus rising from the sea. To these scholars the story of her birth was the symbol of mystery through which the divine message of beauty came into the world. One can imagine that the painter set to work reverently to represent this myth in a worthy manner. The action of the picture is quickly understood. Venus has emerged from the sea on a shell which is driven to the shore by flying wind-gods amidst a shower of roses. As she is about to step on to the land, one of the Hours or Nymphs receives her with a purple cloak. Botticelli has succeeded where Pollaiuolo failed. His picture forms, in fact, a perfectly harmonious pattern. But...