How to Read Paintings: The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Celebrating the arrival of the goddess of love

The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on canvas. 172.5 × 278.9 cm. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. Image source Wikimedia Commons

When Alessandro Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus around 1485, it was part of the ongoing rediscovery of Greco-Roman culture that celebrated the nude figure.

The spread of Humanism in Italy — the belief in the capacity of the individual and the human…