The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)

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The Birth of Venus (Sandro Botticelli)
The birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli , approx. 1485/86
Tempera on canvas
172.5 x 278.5 cm
Uffizi Gallery
detail
Italian 10 cent coin with the portrait of Venus
Zephyr and his mate (Aura or Chloris)
Hora

La nascita di Venere , German: The birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli . It represents the goddess Venus . The picture is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence .

history

The large painting is expected, as well as Botticelli's Primavera , a commissioned work for 'Medici Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Villa di Castello have been and a tribute to the love of 1478 during the Pazzi Conspiracy killed Giuliano di Piero de' Medici to Simonetta Vespucci , whose face it probably represents.

Giorgio Vasari describes the picture in the Vite as "Venus that is born, with the breezes and winds that bring it to earth ...". Jacob Burckhardt calls the picture in his Cicerone "... Venus floating on the shell over the tide".

Description and interpretation

Contrary to the title of the picture, it is not the birth of Venus , but actually the subsequent landing of Venus on the beach in Cyprus . According to Hesiod , Aphrodite is a daughter of Uranus . His son Kronos , on the advice of his mother Gaia , cut off his genitals with a sickle blow and " threw them behind him " into the sea . The blood and the seeds mixed with the sea, which foamed all around and gave birth to Aphrodite, who then led by Zephyros first to Kythera , then went ashore on the coast of Cyprus and hid her nakedness behind a myrtle bush.

The depiction of Venus gliding on a shell is presumably taken from the “stanze per la giostra” by Poliziano . Venus (Greek Aphrodite , "the meerschaum-born") was born in Greek mythology from a shell, which in turn, according to ancient opinion, arose from the meerschaum. The shell is represented here as a scallop shell . [Receipts required]

The Venus is footed on a conch shell, which the west wind Zephyr to the shores of Cyprus is driven. However, it is an idealized landscape that could also have Italian features. One interpretation says that Zephyr wears Aura , the goddess of the gentle morning breeze, in his arms . On the other hand - following Botticelli's other large painting, Primavera - one can also see the nymph Chloris in the embrace, who, according to Ovid's Lent (5, 195 ff.), Only appears after the embrace by Zephyr in " Flora ", the goddess of the spring blossom, transformed. Only the embrace is therefore the prerequisite for spring-like, reproductive events: “genitalis aura favoni”, as it is called in Lucretius ' didactic poem “De rerum natura” (Book 1, 11). According to Ovid's original, a distinguishing feature of Chloris is the fact that she loses rose petals from her mouth when she speaks. Thus this picture would be a thematic variation on Primavera, where Venus also occupies a central position in the picture. Venus and Primavera thus form two complementary allegories in Botticelli's work , which corresponds entirely to the ancient concept. From the right, Venus hands one of the Horen , goddesses of the seasons, a cloak.

The landscape here is simplified and idealized. Simple short grasses cover the land. Two bulrushes, plants that do not really thrive on the beach, indicate the vegetation on the shore sparingly and symbolically, three straight trunks of hard-leaved trees a grove. The sea with its slightly rippled waves and the sea foam on the coast are similarly economical and yet vividly represented. The interspersed gold on the waves, which are drawn in triangular and wavy lines, and the gold on the grass symbolize a divine light. In contrast to the representation of the landscape and the sea, the myrtle of the aura are all the more striking, and even more so the splendor of the robe presented by the Hore, into which ornamental daisies are artfully woven. Pretty cornflowers can be seen in the garb of the Hore.

Despite her nakedness , the goddess is not a symbol of physical, but of spiritual love. The chaste pose is probably modeled on a venus pudica (a shameful Venus).

The anatomy of Venus does not correspond to the classical realism of Leonardo or Raphael , the (too) long neck or the anatomically incorrect posture of the left shoulder are more an anticipation of mannerism , but they emphasize the beauty of Venus.

Botticelli's picture is perhaps inspired by a Homeric hymn in which he sings about the arrival of the goddess on the island: “I want to sing about Aphrodite the beautiful, the chaste ... which dominates the sea-bathed Kypros pinnacles, where the breeze of Zephyros gently carried it on the The waves of the rushing sea in the soft, fluffy foam ... and the Horen took it in with joy. ”The influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses and his Fasti, as well as that of Poliziano's verses, is just as palpable. In an era when almost all paintings depicted biblical subjects, the birth of Venus is an exception in its depiction of ancient mythological figures.

Contrary to theories that Botticelli used the golden ratio in this picture (e.g. in the proportions of Venus), the factor Φ cannot be measured exactly in the picture.

This representation is one of the most brilliant works of European painting and at the same time the first known glorification of the beauty of the naked woman's body since antiquity in its own aesthetic perfection. There have been many attempts in literature to interpret erotic, moral or religious intentions between antiquity and Christianity in this picture. The glorification of Venus, in its almost impersonal absoluteness, eludes these varied interpretations.

role models

The Birth of Venus is one of Botticelli's works based on a description of classical Greek masterpieces by the historian Lukian from the 2nd century. Lukian describes a painting by Apelles called “Venus Anadyomene ”, “ Venus rising from the sea ”.

The Medici collection contained a marble statue, the Venus Medici , whose posture Botticelli took over for his Venus.

reception

  • Ottorino Respighi : Trittico Botticelliano; 1. Primavera, 2. Adorazione dei maghi, 3. La nascità di Venus. Suite. 1927.

Trivia

literature

  • Norman Conrad: Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" - An Iconographic Investigation. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-656-26705-8 .
  • Georges Didi-Huberman : Open Venus. Nudity, dream, cruelty. (= The opening picture, volume 1). Diaphanes, Zurich / Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-935300-63-6 .
  • Lorenz Dittmann : The return of the ancient gods in pictures. Attempt at a new interpretation. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2001, ISBN 3-506-73787-2 .
  • Thomas R. Hoffmann: Botticelli forever - rebirth in the modern age. Belser, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-7630-2706-4 , pp. 50-61.
  • Frank Keim: Sandro Botticelli - The astronomical works. (= Writings on Art History, Volume 54). Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-8300-8738-0 , pp. 31-48.
  • Fabienne Pohl: "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli. An image description. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-668-00431-3 .
  • Aby Warburg : Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and "Spring". An Inquiry into the Concepts of Antiquity in the Early Italian Renaissance. Voss, Hamburg / Leipzig 1893 ( digitized in the Internet Archive ).
  • Frank Zöllner : Botticelli. Tuscan spring. Prestel, Munich et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7913-2025-4 , pp. 80-99.

Web links

Commons : The Birth of Venus  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "[…] l'uno Venere, che nasce, & quelle aure, & venti, che la fanno venire in terra con gli amori [...]", "La vita di Sandro Botticelli" by Giorgio Vasari: Le vite de 'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, ecc. , Firenze 1568, arsworld.net, Vasari: Vita del Botticelli
  2. ^ Jacob Burckhardt: The Cicerone. Complete Neudr. D. First edition Vienna 1958. P. 630.
  3. ↑ Hesiod : Theogony 176 ff.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Warburg 1980. p. 17.
  5. ↑ Una donella non con uman volta / Da 'zefiri lascivi spinta a proda / Gir sopra un nischio ... (Venus Anadyomene, cfr. Ovid, Metamorphosen 2, 27; Fasti 5, 217; Poliziano: Giostra, verse 97-99)