The Rare Bird Review

Today's first stop is a visit to Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus."  c. 1485-86; painted for the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello it is  now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy.

 Botticelli's Venus is so beautiful that we do not notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the queer way her left arm is hinged to the body. Or, rather, we should say that these liberties which Botticelli took with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline add to the beauty and harmony of the design because they enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and delicate being, wafted to our shores as a gift from Heaven.

The duo in the upper left are Zephyr and Chloris, both blowing Venus to the shore.  The nymph on the left is one of the three "Horae" (The Hours),  Greek goddesses of the seasons who were Venus' attendants. 

About the seashell;  Botticelli portrays Venus in the very first suggestion of action, with a complex and beautiful series of twists and turns, as she is about to step off her giant gilded scallop shell onto the shore. Venus was conceived when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, the god Uranus--the severed genitals falling into the sea and fertilizing it. Here what we see is actually not Venus' birth out of the waves, but the moment when, having been conveyed by the shell, she lands at Paphos in Cyprus.  It sounds like an episode from The Sopranos.

As always, click the picture for a larger version.