The Birth of Venus
Landfall
Sandro Botticelli · c. 1485
01
Florence. Around 1485.
A pagan goddess. Nude.
Painted on canvas, not wood.
02
Left: Zephyr, the west wind.
A nymph in his arms.
Both of them blowing.
03
She stands on a shell.
Driven in by the wind.
04
Right: a woman on the shore.
A flowered cloak, held open for her.
The title is wrong. She isn't being born. She's landing.
Wind. Shell. Shore.
Uncropped.
“the moist breath of the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam”
1870
Botticelli died in 1510.
For centuries, his name faded.
Then the Victorians found him.
Ruskin. The Pre-Raphaelites.
Walter Pater's essay, 1870.
Sandro Botticelli
Italian · Early Renaissance · c. 1445 to 1510
Sources · 4
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