Venus (Sandro Botticelli)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Venus (Sandro Botticelli)
Venus
Sandro Botticelli , around 1490
Oil on canvas
158.1 x 68.5 cm
Collection of the picture gallery of the State Museums in Berlin - Prussian cultural heritage

The Venus is a panel painting on canvas by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), which was built around the 1490th

Botticelli was an Italian artist of the early modern period and his famous work The Birth of Venus shows another Venus representation that the observer by the aesthetics and the idealized features of the Venus pudica holds. This shameful Venus was used as an executed study in the painting that has been in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie zu Berlin since 1821 .

Attribution

The Berlin picture of Venus was classified by Wilhelm von Bode , art historian and head of the Gemäldegalerie from 1890 to 1905, as a study carried out for the Florentine birth of Venus . In 1893, the Italian art historian Giovanni Morelli , in contrast to Bode, saw the panel painting as a workshop work based on the Florentine original. Botticelli opened a contract workshop in Florence in 1470.

Material and technology

The female nude was captured in a rectangular format (158.1 × 68.5 cm) using the technique of oil on canvas. The format makes the representation of Venus appear life-size.

description

Because of its successful composition based on the painting of the birth of Venus , he used the motif of Venus pudica in two other depictions of Venus, in which he places the female nudes against a black background. Botticelli put the focus on the bared Venus with long flowing hair against a black background, covering her chest and pubic with her hands.

The goddess is standing on a gray strip in an indefinable space and is illuminated by a light outside the painting. She lifts her free leg and turns slightly towards the viewer. This counter post creates harmony and liveliness in the portrait.

Her hands try to cover her bare body and she uses her long hair to hide her shame. Her head tilts to the right and the blush on her face with the lowered gaze repeats her shame. The golden hair is neatly styled and her curls stand out clearly against the black background.

iconography

Venus, the ancient Italian goddess of love, desire and charm has been equated with the Greek Aphrodite since the 4th century. The marble statue of Aphrodite of Knidos (350 BC) established the type of Venus pudica , the shameful Venus, in antiquity and shows the first life-size representation of a naked woman. The chaste pose is supposed to represent the goddess as a symbol of spiritual, not physical, love.

The birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli , around 1485/86
Tempera on canvas
172.5 x 278.5 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The artistic examination of the ancient figure of Venus pudica took place before Botticelli's birth of Venus . Versions of the famous antique version of the Venus Medici in the 15th century, which was used as a model for Botticelli's depictions of Venus, could be seen in Florence . The relationship of this ancient sculpture to the Berlin painting of Venus Botticellis was already established in the first Berlin gallery catalog from 1830, but it was not until after the exhibition of the Birth of Venus in the Uffizi after 1840 that the “Berlin Venus” was converted as a study of the Florentine “Birth” Designated in 1878, as confirmed by Wilhelm von Bode .

In Aby Warburg's research , the face of Venus was associated with the Florentine noblewoman Simonetta Vespucci , who was considered the most beautiful woman in Florence at the time. The idealized woman type with the high forehead, the long neck and the delicate facial features was often used in allegorical portraits by Botticelli ( Portrait of a Lady , 1475–1480) and reflects the ideal of femininity in Florence in the 15th century.

Further versions

Venus
Sandro Botticelli , around 1490
Oil on canvas
174 × 77 cm
Galleria Sabauda, ​​Turin

Another representation of Venus from the same year repeats the type of Venus pudica with the posture, the falling hair and the passive facial expression. This Venus wears a shimmering, see-through fabric and a pearl on the head, reminiscent of the birth of Venus .

reception

Venus after Botticelli
Andy Warhol , 1984
Screen printing with acrylic on canvas
122 × 183 cm

Botticelli's works were not rediscovered until the 19th century, primarily by the English pre-Raphaelite artist movement . [1] The dreamy quality of Venus inspired surrealists such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magrite .

"Since Venus returned to art galleries in 1984 as one of Andy Warhol's Details of Renaissance Paintings , Botticelli's art has proven to be a popular starting point for postmodern appropriation or quotational art, which cites easily recognizable images from works of art from earlier eras."

Up to the present day, artists have dealt with the painter and draftsman Botticelli. Botticelli's depictions of Venus are still going through a complex process of rediscovery and reinvention.

Provenance

Like Botticelli's Primavera and Birth of Venus , the painting was probably commissioned for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de 'Medici's Villa di Castello and a homage to the love of Giuliano di Piero de' Medicis for Simonetta Vespucci , whose face it presumably represents. The painting of Venus was acquired from the Edward Sollys collection by the Gemäldegalerie Berlin in 1821 .

Exhibitions

Botticelli's depictions of Venus inspire modern and contemporary art. This became evident in 2015 in the exhibition “The Botticelli Renaissance”, which was on view from September 2015 to the end of January 2016 in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie . In addition to works by the artist, this exhibition also includes works of art by artists such as LaChapelle , Tomoko Nagao or Andy Warhol , which were created based on Botticelli's works. The exhibition was also shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from March 5, 2016 to July 3, 2016 .

literature

  • Barbara Deimling: Sandro Botticelli . Cologne 2004
  • Ana Debenedetti, Caroline Elam (Eds.): Botticelli Past and Present . UCL Press, 2019
  • Mark Evans, Stephan Weppelmann, Ana Debenedetti, Ruben Rebmann (eds.): The Botticelli Renaissance . Exhib. Cat. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 2015–2016. Berlin 2015.
  • Körner, Hans: Botticelli , DuMont Verlag, Cologne 2006. ISBN 978-3-8321-7316-6
  • Körner, Hans: Simonetta Vespucci and the love discourse in the early Florentine Renaissance, In: Steigerwald, Jörn / von Rosen, Valeska (ed.): Amor sacro e profano. Models and modeling of love in literature and painting of the Italian Renaissance. Wiesbaden 2012.
  • Körner, Hans: Naked bodies against a black background. The consequences of Sandro Botticelli's foam-born Venus, In: Körner, Hans / Abend, Sandra (Hrsgg.): Vorbilder. Icons of cultural history: from hand ax to Botticelli's Venus to John Wayne. Munich 2015.
  • Körner, Hans: ¨Piu femmine gnude bellissime¨. Decontextualization as an artistic and economic strategy in the work of Sandro Botticelli. Florence 2015.

Web links

Commons : Venus (Sandro Botticelli), Gemäldegalerie  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gemäldegalerie zu Berlin (ed.): The Botticelli Renaissance . Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-7774-2370-8 , pp. 328 .
  2. ↑ Venus - Encyclopedia - Brockhaus.de. Retrieved June 23, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Barbara Deimling: Sandro Botticelli . Cologne 2004.
  4. ↑ Birth of Venus :: Botticelli ► circa 1484. Accessed June 23, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Gemäldegalerie zu Berlin (ed.): The Botticelli Renaissance . Berlin, ISBN 978-3-88609-768-5 , pp. 328 .
  6. ↑ SMB digital | Venus. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Vespucci, Simonetta nell'Enciclopedia Treccani. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (it-IT).
  8. ↑ CATALOGO ONLINE. In: Musei. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (American English).
  9. ↑ Gemäldegalerie zu Berlin (ed.): The Botticelli Renaissance . Berlin 2015, p. 14-15 .
  10. ↑ SMB digital | Venus. Retrieved June 23, 2020 .
  11. ^ National Museums in Berlin: The Botticelli Renaissance. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  12. ^ V&A Botticelli Reimagined. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .