page_title: The Birth of Venus
section_title: Derivative versions
hierarchical_section_title: The Birth of Venus / Derivative versions
caption_attribution_description: English: Italian Renaissance paintings in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
context_page_description: The Birth of Venus is a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, probably made in the mid 1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown. The painting is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
  Although the two are not a pair, the painting is inevitably discussed with Botticelli's other very large mythological painting, the Primavera, also in the Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance; of the two, the Birth is better known than the Primavera. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity, as was the size and prominence of a nude female figure in the Birth. It used to be thought that they were both commissioned by the same member of the Medici family, but this is now uncertain.
  They have been endlessly analysed by art historians, with the main themes being: the emulation of ancient painters and the context of wedding celebrations, the influence of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the identity of the commissioners.
context_section_description: Botticelli, or more likely his workshop, repeated the figure of Venus in another painting of about 1490.  This life-sized work depicts a similar figure and pose, partially clad in a light blouse, and contrasted against a plain dark background. It is in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.  There is another such workshop Venus in Berlin, and very likely others were destroyed in the "Bonfire of the Vanities".  Examples seem to have been exported to France and Germany, probably influencing Lucas Cranach the Elder among others.
  More than a decade later, Botticelli adapted the figure of Venus for a nude personification of "Truth" in his Calumny of Apelles.  Here one hand is raised, pointing to heaven for justification, and the figure's gaze also looks upwards; the whole effect is very different.
caption: Berlin Venus, workshop of Botticelli. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
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