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Botticelli's Birth of Venus: Why the Sea Matters
In Sandro Botticelli's picture The Birth of Venus, the ocean is far more than a decorative backdrop. The sea represents both the physical medium of the myth, where divine foam yields the goddess, and a symbolic concept of divine fertilisation adapted by Renaissance humanists in Florence. The Sea and the Mythological Arrival Sandro Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus around 1485 using tempera on canvas. The large painting measures 172.5 centimetres by 278.5 centimetres. Contrary to the title, the artwork does not depict the exact moment of the goddess emerging from the sea waves. Botticelli instead depicts her arrival at Paphos in Cyprus after travelling across the water on a giant gilded scallop shell. The ancient Greek myth behind the scene is violent and gruesome. The god Saturn, also known as Cronus, castrated his father Uranus and threw his severed genitals into the ocean. The ocean waters were fertilised by this act, resulting in the creation of Venus. Botticelli altered the narrative by removing all gory details, presenting a delicate and harmonious scene to his audience. Botticelli rendered the sea surface in a distinct, non-naturalistic style. He painted the water with simple V-shaped marks that transform into swirling patterns of lace-like foam near the shore. A flat blue sky sits behind the figures. Leonardo da Vinci later noted Botticelli's lack of interest in natural landscape painting, observing that Botticelli seemed to create background scenes simply by throwing a sponge soaked with colour against the canvas. Sea Foam and Humanist Philosophy The depiction of sea foam carries specific linguistic connections to the original myth. In Italian, the word schiuma translates to sea foam, but it also functioned as a slang term for semen. Viewers in fifteenth-century Florence understood this connection between the sea foam and the generative act that birthed the goddess from the ocean. Humanist scholars associated with the Medici family provided a refined interpretation of the ocean myth. Marsilio Ficino, a leading philosopher of the Platonic Academy at the Medicean Villa Careggi, argued that the story should be understood symbolically rather than literally. Ficino asserted that the birth of Venus represented the birth of beauty in the human mind when fertilised by divinity. This philosophical reinterpretation transformed the ocean from a site of mythological violence into a symbol of spiritual awakening. Ficino argued that contemplating earthly beauty allows the human soul to move upward toward divine beauty and God. The sea in Botticelli's painting thus fulfils a double purpose, combining pagan narrative elements with accepted Christian ideas. La nascita di Venere (Botticelli). Public domain; source: Wikimedia Commons. Technical Canvas and Decorative Gold Botticelli chose canvas as the painting surface for The Birth of Venus. In fifteenth-century Italy, canvas was a less expensive material than the wooden panels typically used for religious altarpieces and court paintings. Canvas was the preferred material for nonreligious and mythological subjects commissioned to decorate private country villas. The large physical dimensions of the painting made a wooden support impractical. A panel of that size would have been heavy and prone to structural issues. Recent research shows that The Birth of Venus was not painted as a direct counterpart to Botticelli's Primavera. The two paintings differ in size, technique, and structural composition, and they were painted during different phases of the artist's career. Botticelli applied real gold pigment extensively across the canvas to emphasise the divine nature of the subject. He painted gold accents onto the scallop shell, the hair of Venus, and the surrounding trees. Each dark green leaf in the orange grove features a gold spine and outline, while short diagonal gold lines mark the tree trunks. Figures of the Wind and Shore On the left side of the canvas, two winged figures float through the air with entwined limbs. The ruddy male figure is Zephyr, the Greek god of the west wind, who blows vigorously to push Venus toward the shoreline. Entwined with him is Chloris, a nymph who sighs warm breath. Pink roses with golden centres fall through the air around them, echoing the legend that roses first appeared at the birth of Venus. On the right shore, a female attendant stands ready to receive the goddess. This figure represents a nymph or one of the Horae, the Greek goddesses of the seasons who attended Venus. She holds out a pink cloak embroidered with spring flowers, including red and white daisies, yellow primroses, and blue cornflowers. An anemone flower growing near her feet signals the arrival of spring. The attendant wears a myrtle garland, which was the sacred tree of Venus, along with a sash made of pink roses. Behind her lies a grove of flowering orange trees representing the sacred garden of the Hesperides. The small white blossoms are tipped with gold pigment, reinforcing the decorative quality of the background. Compositional Models and Sacred Parallels For the pose of Venus, Botticelli drew upon the classical Venus pudica or modest Venus model found in ancient Roman sculpture. The goddess stands with one hand placed over her breasts and the other covering her groin. Botticelli depicted her as a virginal figure intent on preserving her modesty, using long streams of blonde hair touched with gold to cover her body. The structure of the painting relies on established Christian visual traditions despite its pagan subject. The formal arrangement of the central figure standing near water flanked by attendant figures mirrors traditional depictions of the Baptism of Christ. Additionally, the posture of the nymph reaching out with the cloak closely resembles contemporary paintings of the Annunciation to Mary. A persistent legend claims that Botticelli modelled Venus after Simonetta Vespucci, the wife of Marco Vespucci and mistress of Giuliano de' Medici. Simonetta died before Botticelli created the painting. Botticelli used a similar facial type for both Venus and the Virgin Mary, reflecting Ficino's concept that both figures represent emanations of divine love. Botticelli's Career and Name Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi acquired the name Botticelli through his family. His older brother Giovanni, a successful pawnbroker, was nicknamed Il Botticello, meaning the Little Barrel. Because Alessandro lived in his brother's household, locals began referring to him as Sandro del Botticello, which eventually shortened to Botticelli. Under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, Botticelli established himself as a prominent painter in late fifteenth-century Florence. His artistic technique combined decorative Gothic contours with the humanistic emotion and spatial perspective of Florentine painting. His work created an ideal of beauty that reappeared in later compositions such as The Calumny of Apelles. Although later owned by Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, the original patron who commissioned The Birth of Venus remains unknown. The canvas now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where it remains one of the most recognised depictions of classical mythology from the Italian Renaissance.
Zeus and the Flood: Three Greek Myths
Rain and rivers covered the earth until only Parnassus remained above the waves, carrying Deucalion and Pyrrha to safety after nine days and nights. Once the waters withdrew, they cast stones behind them, creating men from Deucalion’s stones and women from Pyrrha’s. The Flood of Deucalion Rain fell over the earth while rivers broke from their courses. Zeus had resolved to destroy humanity because people had become wicked. He called on the god of the sea, and together they covered the land with water from the sky and from the earth. The flood rose over the highest mountains. Parnassus alone remained above the waves, with a small piece of dry ground at its summit. After nine days and nine nights, a vessel carrying Deucalion and Pyrrha came to rest there. Deucalion was the son of Prometheus. Pyrrha was the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, and his niece. They were the only human survivors. When the waters withdrew, the sea returned to its shores and the rivers to their channels. In one account, the north wind cleared the clouds at Zeus’s command, while the sea god sent Triton to sound the retreat of the waters. Deucalion and Pyrrha left their vessel and offered a sacrifice to Zeus, the preserver of fugitives. They then went to the shrine of Themis beside the river Cephissus. The shrine was covered with seaweed, and its altar was cold. They prayed for humanity to be renewed. Zeus heard them and sent Hermes to promise that their request would be granted. Themis then instructed them to cover their heads and throw the bones of their mother behind them. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood the words to mean the bones of Mother Earth, the rocks lying beside the river. They cast stones behind them as they walked. The stones thrown by Deucalion became men, while those thrown by Pyrrha became women. In this way, the human race began again. Source note: Primary text: Ovid, Metamorphoses. Corpus check: The Greek Myths; Greek Myths & Tales. Zeus and Lycaon Zeus entered Arcadia in the form of a mortal to see whether reports of human wickedness were true. He reached the palace of Lycaon as twilight darkened the earth. He gave a sign that a god had arrived. The people prayed, but Lycaon mocked their worship. He decided to test the stranger and planned to kill him secretly during the night. Lycaon then placed human flesh before his guest. Zeus recognised the deed and revealed himself. He overturned the table and punished the king by changing him into a wolf. Lycaon’s house was destroyed, either by a thunderbolt or by a flood. His punishment followed his contempt for the gods and his treatment of the divine visitor. One account gives a different explanation for the feast. Lycaon had warned his subjects that Zeus often came to inspect their conduct. When he announced that the god would visit, some of his sons carried out the deed to discover whether the visitor was truly Zeus, since a god would recognise what they had done. In another version, Lycaon himself, angered by Zeus’s seduction of his daughter Callisto, served his grandson Areas to Zeus. Zeus overturned the table and changed Lycaon into a wolf in response. Zeus and Lycaon. Original MythSource illustration created for this story; not a historical artwork. Source note: Primary text: Ovid, Metamorphoses. Corpus check: The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics); The Greek Myths. Zeus and Typhon Typhon rushed towards Olympus, and the gods fled in terror to Egypt. They disguised themselves as animals. Zeus became a ram, Apollo a crow, Dionysus a goat, Hera a white cow, Artemis a cat, Aphrodite a fish, and Ares a boar. Hermes became an ibis. Athene alone stayed behind and taunted Zeus for retreating. Zeus resumed his true form and attacked Typhon with thunderbolts. Typhon was the child of Gaia and Tartarus, born in the Corycian Cave of Cilicia after the destruction of the Giants. He was the largest monster ever born. His legs were coiled serpents, his outstretched arms reached a hundred leagues in either direction, and countless serpent heads formed his hands. His ass-head touched the stars, his wings darkened the sun, fire flashed from his eyes, and flaming rocks came from his mouth. His many voices included the speech of a god, a bull’s bellow, a lion’s roar, a dog’s yelp, and a snake’s hiss. He challenged Zeus’s rule over gods and mortals. In the continuing fight, Typhon overpowered Zeus and removed the sinews from his limbs. He gave Zeus’s thunderbolts to Gaia and went after the source of music played by Cadmus. Cadmus told him that he would enjoy a lyre strung with Zeus’s sinews, then hid the sinews in another cave and continued playing. While Typhon was distracted, Zeus recovered his thunderbolts. When the music stopped, Typhon returned to his cave and found the weapons gone. He unleashed destruction across the world. Animals were devoured, rivers turned to dust, and seas became dry land. Hermes restored the sinews to Zeus in one account. Zeus returned to Olympus on a chariot drawn by winged horses and pursued Typhon with thunderbolts. At Mount Nysa, the Three Fates gave Typhon fruits that seemed to restore his strength but instead doomed him. At Mount Haemus, he hurled whole mountains at Zeus. Zeus struck them with thunderbolts, sending them back against Typhon and wounding him. Typhon fled to Sicily, where Zeus buried him beneath Mount Etna. Fire still belches from its cone. Source note: Primary text: Hesiod, Theogony. Corpus check: War in Greek Mythology; The Greek Myths.
Yoshitoshi Finished a Hundred Moons as Ukiyo-e Died With Him
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) is usually called the last great master of ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodblock print. His masterpiece, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Tsuki hyakushi), pairs the moon with a hundred figures from Japanese and Chinese history and legend: a general on a night raid, an exiled poet, a fox spirit, an empress. He began publishing it in instalments from about 1885, and the last of the hundred sheets reached buyers only shortly before he died in 1892, completing the series in the same year as his own death. Through those same years, photography studios and imported mechanical presses were taking over the newspaper and portrait trade that had kept woodblock publishing solvent for two centuries. Yoshitoshi spent much of his working life in poverty and suffered repeated episodes of mental illness, one of them severe enough to put him in hospital. He kept working through all of it, and raised the woodblock print to one of its highest points at the exact moment the trade that had produced it was dying around him. A Merchant's Son in Kuniyoshi's Studio Yoshitoshi was born Owariya Yonejiro on 30 April 1839, in the Shimbashi district of Edo. His father was a merchant who had bought the family's way into samurai rank, a common transaction in the last decades of the shogunate. Sent to live with an uncle, a pharmacist, at the age of three, he had begun drawing lessons by five. At eleven he was apprenticed to Utagawa Kuniyoshi, already one of Edo's most established print masters. Kuniyoshi had studied Western engravings and, unusually for a woodblock studio, had his pupils draw from live models rather than copy stock poses. He gave his new student the art name Yoshitoshi. The boy's first known print appeared in 1853, when he was fourteen, and he went on designing under Kuniyoshi's supervision through the 1850s. Kuniyoshi died in 1861; Yoshitoshi was in his early twenties, and already working independently in one of Edo's most crowded trades. The Bloody Prints of the 1860s By the mid-1860s Yoshitoshi had a reputation for violence on the page. Wakan hyaku monogatari ("One Hundred Ghost Tales of China and Japan"), begun in 1865, mixed old folklore with images meant to unsettle. In 1866 and 1867 he and a fellow Kuniyoshi pupil, Utagawa Yoshiiku, published Eimei nijuhasshuku ("Twenty-Eight Famous Murders with Verse"), each artist contributing fourteen sheets. The series became the defining example of muzan-e, the "cruel pictures" genre: close studies of torture and killing, printed with pigment mixed into the glue to suggest congealed blood. The timing was not accidental. These were the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, swept away by the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and Edo's print publishers were selling plenty of real political violence alongside the invented kind. Yoshitoshi followed the fall of the old government directly with Kaidai hyaku senso (1868), responding to the Battle of Ueno, fought a few streets from his own studio as shogunate loyalists made their last stand against imperial troops. Poverty, Breakdown, and the Name Taiso Success did not hold. By 1869 critics ranked Yoshitoshi among the best woodblock designers working in Japan, but commissions fell away within two years. Depression set in, and in 1872 it became a full breakdown. He was living at the time with a woman named Okoto, in conditions poor enough that the couple burned their own floorboards for fuel. Okoto eventually sold herself into a brothel to keep him working. Yoshitoshi recovered in 1873 and marked it by changing his art name from Ikkaisai to Taiso, meaning great resurrection. The new Meiji press gave him a market he had not had before: illustrated newspapers needed woodblock artists to draw current events for a mass readership, and Yoshitoshi supplied that market for the rest of the decade. The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 brought him a further run of newspaper work. Japan's Most Popular Print Artist Through the late 1870s and early 1880s Yoshitoshi built a following with Dai Nihon meisho kagami ("Mirror of Famous Generals of Great Japan"), a run of warrior portraits for the publisher Funazu Chujiro. By 1882 he was financially secure for the first time in his career. Fujiwara no Yasumasa Playing the Flute by Moonlight, from 1883, is usually named among his strongest single compositions: a court noble walks on undisturbed while a would-be attacker hesitates, stopped by the sound of the music. In 1880 Yoshitoshi had met Sakamaki Taiko, a former geisha with two children; they married in 1884, and he adopted her son, who trained under him and later worked, as Tsukioka Kogyo, on prints of Noh theatre. That same year, Japan's print publishers and booksellers named Yoshitoshi the country's most popular ukiyo-e artist. A Hundred Moons, A Hundred Stories One Hundred Aspects of the Moon began appearing in 1885, published in instalments by Akiyama Buemon. Yoshitoshi eventually completed a hundred sheets, oban size, each pairing the moon with a scene from Japanese or Chinese history and legend. The moon itself is not always shown; the connecting idea is that every episode in the series takes place beneath it. Early sheets include Inaba Mountain Moon, showing the young Toyotomi Hideyoshi leading a night climb up a cliff face to help Oda Nobunaga take an enemy castle, and Moon of the Enemy's Lair, in which the prince Yamato Takeru, disguised as a woman, waits to draw a sword hidden beneath his robe at a rebel feast. Other sheets turn to Chinese legend, with Chang'e fleeing to the moon after stealing the elixir of immortality, or to older Japanese folklore, with the story of an old woman abandoned on a mountainside. Buyers are reported to have queued before dawn for new instalments as they appeared. The series ran for seven years and was still unfinished when Yoshitoshi's health began to fail for the last time. New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts Yoshitoshi began his last major series, Shinkei sanjurokkaisen ("New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts"), in 1889. It returned to the ghost stories of his early muzan-e years, but the handling was different. Where the 1860s prints went for shock, the ghost series works through suggestion. One sheet shows Oiwa, the wronged wife of the kabuki play Yotsuya Kaidan, calmly nursing her infant; the only warning of what is coming is a sash that curls across the print like a snake. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, The Yotsuya Ghost Story, from New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts (1892): Oiwa calmly nurses her infant while her sash rears up like a snake, the only warning of the horror to come. Thirty-six sheets and a title page were planned. Three were printed and published only after Yoshitoshi's death, from designs he had already completed. The Last Print, and the End of a Form Yoshitoshi's health failed for the last time in early 1891. He suffered a relapse severe enough that he believed, wrongly, that he was hosting a gathering of fellow artists in his own home; soon afterwards, thieves took what money he had. He was admitted to hospital. One Hundred Aspects of the Moon was still appearing in instalments, and its final sheet reached the public only shortly before his death, completing the run of a hundred within his own lifetime. Yoshitoshi left hospital in May 1892 but did not go back to his own house, renting rooms instead. He died on 9 June 1892, in Ryogoku, Tokyo, of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was fifty-three. He had already named his student Mizuno Toshikata as his successor; Migita Toshihide and others carried the studio's work on, and Yoshitoshi is thought to have trained something close to eighty pupils over his career. A stone memorial was raised in Tokyo's Mukojima Hyakkaen garden in 1898. He worked through the years that made his own trade obsolete. Photographic studios and imported mechanical presses took over the newspaper illustration and portrait work that had financed woodblock publishing for two centuries; by the 1890s, colour woodblock printing survived mainly as a specialist practice rather than a mass medium. The biographer Roger Keyes titled his 1982 study of the artist Courage and Silence; the historian John Stevenson judged that Yoshitoshi's work "gave ukiyo-e another generation of life." His prints are now held by, among others, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Yale University Art Gallery. One Hundred Aspects of the Moon remains the most reproduced of his series and is still exhibited as a complete set of a hundred. Masters of Ukiyo-e What Is Ukiyo-e? Hokusai Hiroshige Utamaro Sharaku Kuniyoshi Yoshitoshi Ohara Koson