AphroditeBirth1.0004

AphroditeBirth1.0004_Botticelli

Venus comes ashore on the island of Cyprus, born from the sea-foam, as Hesiod describes in Theogony 188 - 195. (See ML p. 70 or the link.)

Ancient Roman wall paintings and other art frequently showed Venus standing in a seashell. That type is called the "Aphrodite Anadyomene" (Aphrodite emerging from the sea).

*** Even though the basic iconography of this painting is taken from classical antecedants, Botticelli spruces it up with rather high-brow philosophical ideas such as those articulated by Plato and his followers in later centuries. Botticelli's patron commissioned the painter to revive the classical iconography for a 15th-century context, the start of the Renaissance. So, it manifests "the most beautiful and most vital personalit[y] of Olympus returned to European art." But more deeply, the painting represents the birth of Beauty itself. (See Gombrich, p. 54, for detail.)