Greece to Paris, 530 BCE–1890

Sandro Botticelli

The Birth of Venus

about 1485

Tempera on canvas, 68 × 109 3/4 in. Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Sandro Botticelli (Italian, 1445–1510). Look at the outlines: every figure is drawn with a clean contour, and the colour inside is nearly flat.

Look at

• A dark line runs round the goddess's body, hair and shell, so she reads as a cut-out shape on the sea.
• The sea is a sheet of pale green with small white V-marks for waves, more pattern than water.
• The figures hardly cast shadows, and the light comes from nowhere in particular.
• Hair, cloaks and falling roses are pulled into long curling lines that all show the same wind, blowing in from the left.

• Venus comes ashore on a shell, blown by the wind gods; the woman at right holds out her cloak.

Image: Google Arts & Culture scan, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (faithful reproduction of a public-domain 2D work)