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Renaissance Visions
Myth and Art
By Patrick Hunt
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Renaissance Visions
Myth and Art
PATRICK HUNT
Ariel Books
New York
Patrick Hunt has taught in the Humanities at Stanford University since 1994. He is
the author of many articles on the intersection of mythology, archaeology, ancient
science, and art history. He directs the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project and the
National Geographic Society Hannibal Expedition (2007-2008). Hunt earned his Ph.D. in
Archaeology from the Institute of Archaelogy, UCL, University of London.
Along with monographs, novellas, and other writing, Patrick has written Caravaggio, an
art historical biography and critical book on the Baroque genius painter. It has been highly
acclaimed in reviews; the Art Newspaper International in London described it as “first-class”
and “a rattling good yarn.” He has presented the genre of new myth fable at the Sun Valley
Writer’s Conference. His archaeology books include Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History.
Other University Readers titles by Patrick Hunt:
Alpine Archaeology, ISBN 978-1-934269-00-8
Myths for All Time: Selected Greek Stories Retold, ISBN 978-1-934269-09-1
Rembrandt: His Life in Art - Second Edition, ISBN 978-1-934269-03-9
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Hunt
Cover Design by Monica Hui Hekman
Reproduction of Mantegna’s SAMSON AND DELILAH courtesy of National Gallery London for academic
publishing only. All other images in the public domain.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or using any other information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in the United States of America in 2008 by University Reader Company, Inc.
12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-934269-14-5 (paper)
Contents
Preface
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Chapter 1
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Chapter 2
Mantegna’s Samson and Delilah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 3
Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda and the Swan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Chapter 4
Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 5
Titian’s Death of Actaeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 6
Titian’s Abduction of Europa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Chapter 7
Bruegel’s Landscape with Fall of Icarus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 8
Michelangelo’s Delphic Sibyl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Chapter 9
Michelangelo’s Cumaean Sibyl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chapter 10
Caravaggio’s Bacchus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Chapter 11
Caravaggio’s Narcissus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
Chapter 12
Caravaggio’s Raising of Lazarus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Bibliography
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
Notes
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125
Index
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
Preface
“To think is to speculate with images…”
giordano bruno (1532-1600)
Mythology is one of the more profound ways we humans creatively respond when imagining time and eternity or when thinking about themes and ideas in cyclical history and our
place therein. How much more satisfying when artists of the Renaissance or any other period
look at mythology with fresh insight or new ideas transformed into pictures, sculptures and
the like. Their visions thus become even more powerful in the ability to inspire us to ponder
such ideas in visual terms; as Bruno suggests, that thinking itself requires images to become
empowered.
As if to pontificate on what is intellectually acceptable, most modern connotations of speculation carry a degree of risk, of gambling either with logic or some other capital. Speculation, however, as Bruno uses the verb, embeds the idea that seeing (from Latin specula) is not
a negative but is possible pioneering made from a watchtower over a scouted landscape, at
its best a form of exploration. In the modern mind there might be more than just suggestion
that speculation could be both fantastic and idiosyncratic rather than based on reality and
commonly seen and appreciated by all. Yet Myth, by its imaginary nature, seems to always
invite speculation and even some personalizing, especially when the culture that originally
imagined a myth is an ancient one, possibly no longer existing or having transformed almost
beyond recognition. Myth also invites speculation when meaning is not limited to one set of
hermeneutics but can instead have a kaleidoscope of turns and be deliberately ambiguous.
This is why it is always safer for skilled mythographers and art historians – like good historiographers - to research knowable dates and references, with archives and correspondence,
with provenance and bills of sale (always incredibly valuable resources) rather than suspect
iconologies and iconographies and the labyrinths of meaning.
All that said, this small book makes no apology for venturing into speculative territory at
times. These twelve myth subjects rendered by Renaissance masters are arbitrarily selected
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here not just because they are beautiful or because they are necessarily the greatest paintings by these masters or even the most important myths, however that might be decided by
anyone, but rather because they have moved this author in some way to look at them more
closely again and again. In fact, I never tire of looking at them. My ideas are never as grand
or profound as these myth paintings themselves, but I claim them as my own, while also
acknowledging others’ excellent observations gathered over many years.
Botticelli, Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Bruegel, Michelangelo and Caravaggio
have all inspired many generations with these and many more images beside. That they
found these particular myths - the Birth of Venus, Samson and Delilah, Leda and the Swan,
Bacchus and Ariadne, Europa and the Bull, Diana and Actaeon, the fall of Icarus, the Oracle
of Delphi, the Sibyl of Cumae, Bacchus-Dionysus, Narcissus and Lazarus - worthy of their
attention and their own visual speculation draws us back to them after centuries. The Renaissance is rich in newly-rediscovered mythology, and so many subjects beckon not selected here, many also ekphrases or visual descriptions of ancient Classical texts in one way
or another. Caravaggio is also included here because he bridges between the Renaissance
and Baroque, of which he is a pioneer. Although some might wonder why a few Jewish and
Christian tales are included, it is because they also touch something deeper and older. If
these artists intended viewers to see even a small portion of the ideas covered in this small
book, which is mostly unknowable, then I am content to trod over ground that far more wise
than I have also already covered. I acknowledge my debt to them. Although the artists and
paintings selected here may not have been deeply in touch with all the literary and artistic traditions discussed in this book, the fact that they painted them carefully within these
myths’ detailed narratives is proof that myth came alive for them as each artist interpreted
the stories anew.
I must thank those who inspire me and to them this book is dedicated. Richard Martin is
a wise bard who delights all with his deep love of mythology. Jenny March is a poet’s sage
who can hear the wind in the wing beats of Pegasus. Most of all, Pamela, my wife, is the
Muse whose lovely voice I follow even when blind. I also want to thank Jessica Knott for her
superb editing.
Patrick Hunt
Stanford University
January, 2008
Chapter 1
SANDRO BOTTICELLI’S BIRTH OF VENUS, c. 1484
Uffizi Gallery, Florence (172.5 x 278.5 cm)
Introduction
If there is one painting able to sum up the new beauty of Renaissance art, it could easily be Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, “incomparable” as Lightbown rightfully praises.1 It may
also be among the first important masterpieces to break from Medieval and Renaissance
Christian tradition, becoming the virtual “icon”2 of Renaissance Humanism in art, signaling independence by depicting a “pagan” mythological theme. So it can also symbolically
be about the birth of the Renaissance, although Botticelli would not have made such a case
however innovative its vision. On the other hand, however pioneering in certain aspects,
Malcolm Bull singles out Botticelli’s Venus images as isolated mythographic instances that
do not actually develop further iconography of Venus as the Renaissance would come to
understand it.3 Not even originally titled the “Birth of Venus” (this title was a nineteenth
century invention), it may have instead been originally named Venus Landing on the Shore.
Little historic wrangling over its inspiration and its meaning, however, can detract from
this painting’s enormous status in Renaissance art.
A large, almost 2 by 3 meters, canvas painted in tempera probably between 1484-86
for Lorenzo di Pierfrancsco (one of the Medici family branches) and later acquired by Cosimo de Medici, it hung at the Villa Castello in Florence possibly as early as 1485 and
most certainly by 1540. It was likely intended as a wall decoration for one of the villa’s
state chambers, but also may have celebrated love itself and perhaps even the nuptials of
the famously beautiful Simonetta Vespucci who seems to be its model for Venus. Simonetta’s home was in the legendarily reputed birthplace of Venus for Italians, the thus-named
coastal Porto Venere.
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Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus
Economical in composition and simple in its number of figures, the Birth of Venus
highlights only beauty as its subject. Its figures divided in three parts, at the left the
western benevolent wind Zephyr embraces a wind nymph (probably Aura) as both fly
through the air blowing Venus to shore on her shell soon after her birth, where the
Hora of Spring, Chloris, waits to wrap Venus in a floral-embroidered pink mantled cape.
Clothed only in her golden hair Venus stands alone in a pose reminiscent of an ancient
Classical Venus sculpture she deliberately echoes, possibly the Venus Capitolina now in
Rome after a Praxitelean original4 – since her arm gestures covering herself are practically identical - or a similar ancient Venus known as the sculpture Venus di Medici as
further discussed below.
The deep marine background is also grand but simple in its large scale, sweeping up
to a high horizon where the coastline weaves in and out to meet it. A grove of citrus
trees, probably orange, blooms on the right, and although this would normally happen
in winter rather than spring, these white blossoms are in some way a counterbalance to
the pink roses cascading around Zephyr and Aura and nearly to Venus herself as she
steps out of shell to land. The tiny waves swell toward shore and there the light surf
Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
9
washes the foreground beach, only frothy under her shell as
if to suggest her sea foam origin.
The early morning light comes from the east at the viewer’s
right, and the subtly complex color and kinetic scheme of the
painting is brilliant: on the horizontal
plane, a luminous blue sky complements a reflective light green sea and
contrasts with the shadowy dark foreground; the pastel but shaded folds of
Zephyr’s blue cloak billowing in the
open air at left darkly contrasts the dazzling whiteness of Venus and the coral
Detail of Chloris
Detail of Zephyr and Aura
pink folded mantle of Chloris moves
against the static dark green citrus grove
on the right. Gold from the dawn radiates off the veins of the orange
tree leaves.
At center, the purity of Venus’ stunningly white body is that skin
tone yet untouched by hot sun, especially since she has only been
recently born. Like the best Carrara
marble freshly quarried, there is no
sign of a tan on her body and only her
cheeks are rosy. If the gold-rimmed
shell is a scallop with its curved ribs,
it is also like a giant oyster half with Detail of Venus
Venus revealed as its precious whitest
Detail of Shell
pearl, a gem that is also linked to her in Classical iconography
as a precious gift of the sea. She is just about to step from her shell unto the land, her left foot
rising over the shell’s golden hinge and her lifted right foot about to follow.
The floral and vegetal motifs in the painting are not insignificant. The orange tree grove
catches the gold of dawn, as mentioned, brimming with white blossoms the perfume of
whose fragrance can almost be breathed. Some arboreal ambiguity in identifying the trees
could also suggest they are laurels (Laurus nobilis) in that both kinds of tree have longish
leaves pointing upwards with tiny blossoms, and laurel blooms later in early spring whereas
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Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
oranges bloom mostly in summer with their fruit ripening in winter (no
fruit is on these trees). But the leaves of citrus are more rounded as these
are, and laurel leaves are generally narrower, so citrus appears more logical even with the laurel associated with the Medici.
Falling roses would ultimately lose and spread their petals, but here
they are fresh as Venus herself. Some of the roses have even landed on the
wings of Aura where they rest. The rose was always identified with Ve- Detail of Falling Roses
nus, as it was also associated with the goddess Isis in whose transformed
and syncretic Christian milieu it became the flower of the Virgin Mary, great patroness of
a higher celestial love that attempted to purify its Classical sources. In the left foreground,
cattails (Typha latifolia) grow over the water, at first an oddity since they are a marsh plant
and not identified as a marine habitat growth. Under Chloris, the Hora (or Hour) of Spring
on the shore at right, a single anemone wind flower grows. Tiny single blades of grass bend
in the golden sunlight above the shore. On the white dress of Chloris, humble blue cornflowers (fiordaliso in Italian) are embroidered; on her gold-hemmed and collared coral pink
mantle, embroidered cornflowers are joined with marguerites and a red flower as well as a
yellow flower. Around Chloris’ body are two wreaths, a pectoral of myrtle, also sacred to
Venus, and a girdle of thornless pink roses seemingly identical to those falling from the sky
although the falling or floating wind-blown roses are slightly larger. With the exception of
the citrus, all of these flowers are of spring, their primary meaning also linked to the birth of
that season.
Classical Myths of the Birth of Venus and Near Eastern Connections
According to Greek myth, the irrational giant Titans ruled the earth, sea and sky before
their own children rebelled and imposed more order. In a violent dynastic succession, with
his mother Gaia’s help, Kronos took a curved flint knife and overthrew his father Uranus
by castrating him. He threw the knife that became the curved northeast coast of Sicily at
Zanke (later Messina) and threw the genitals into the Mediterranean Sea, were they floated
awhile oozing sperm and blood. From the foamy seed cresting the waves, the sea coalesced
the foam into Aphrodite, whose Greek name means born “out of the sea foam.” As violent
as her birth, Venus was the absolute paragon of perfect beauty, but the domain of sexuality she also ruled was an obvious consequence of her source material in the sperm of Ouranus (Uranus). Aphrodite was one of the oldest deities the Greeks knew and her power
Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
11
extended over every living thing and her greatest attribute of desire overwhelmed even
the gods themselves.
In a slower cultural process of diffusion than the myth account of her birth, the westward journey of the goddess can also be traced across time and many lands. Venus is her
Roman name, but the goddess is always associated with the planet bearing her name, itself
a cultural carryover when variations of her worship early migrated from Mesopotamia5
in the cult and name of Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian-Babylonian Ishtar, both also represented by the planet Venus, the brightest celestial body in the sky after sun and moon.
Even the Greek word aster for “star” retains that connection, as does the Latin word stella.
Because Phoenicia bridged her Near Eastern worship (where one form of her was known
as Astarte) across to Cyprus, the Classical world always identified Cyprus (also known
as Cytherea) and especially Paphos as her home. Aphrodite (Venus) was also named as
Kyprogeneia (“Cyprus-born”) as well as the Paphian Goddess and Cytherea or Kythereia.
Having to cross the water from the Near Eastern Levant, Cyprus would be her first stepping stone westward, although this poses a problem in myth literature because she is said
to move westward via the wind, not eastward, and this is discussed more fully below.
Ancient and Contemporary Literature
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns to Venus are ancient source texts, among many
others, accounting for the birth of Venus in the Renaissance world. As Hesiod tells it in
his Theogony 160ff, 180-85, 188-200, when Kronos conspired with his mother Gaia to punish
Ouranus-Uranus, she armed him with a giant gray flint sickle:
“[Kronos] swung it sharply and lopped off the members of his own father, and threw
them behind him to fall where they would…but the members themselves when Kronos
had lopped them with the flint, he threw from the mainland into the great wash of the sea
water and they drifted a great while on the open sea, and there spread a circle of white
foam from the immortal flesh, and in it grew a girl, whose course first took her to Kythera,
and from there she afterward made her way to sea-washed Cyprus and stepped ashore, a
modest lovely goddess. And about her slight and slender feet the grass grew, and the gods
called her Aphrodite, and men do too, and the sea-foam born goddess, and garlanded
Kythereia because from the sea-foam she grew, and Kythereia because she had gone to
Kythera, and Kyprogeneia because she came forth from wave-washed Cyprus…”6
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Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
Although Botticelli would have probably needed a scholar like Ficino to introduce him to
these Hesiodic lines or, as Bull attests, more likely via Medici court poets like Politianus,7 it
is interesting that Botticelli’s Venus is, above all, modest in her loveliness, just as Hesiod describes above in his “modest, lovely goddess” as she “stepped ashore” from the “open sea”
unto land where “the grass grew.” That all these visual ideas are in Botticelli’s canvas may
be indications of a Hesiodic literary source, possibly filtered through Renaissance literature.
The Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite also develop her nature and character, as well as her
power over living things. Of all the Greek deities, only three chaste goddesses are beyond
her power: Athena, Artemis and Hestia, as the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 5 tells. But all others, mortal and immortal, are under her sway:
“Muse , tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite the Cyprian, who stirs up sweet passion
in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in the air and all
the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all that the sea [rears]: all these love the
deeds of rich-crowned Cytherea.”8
Here the Homeric Hymn calls her “golden,” and this is a common thread in Aphrodite iconography, just as Botticelli has given his Venus a tawny mass of wind-blown golden hair and
also tinged his landscape with dawn gold. The artist has also created a landscape that joins the
three cardinal elements here in sky (even winged in Aura), earth (where Chloris stands beside
the grove) and water (out of which the shell came) in synch with the words “air,” “dry land”
and “sea” as the hymn suggests her power extends everywhere life is lived. If Botticelli assembles air, earth, and water and adds fire in the golden light, all four great elements are present.
According to Luchinat, a single line in Ovid’s Metamorphoses II.27 is only one possible literary source for the myth as Botticelli depicts it.9
“And the Horae…Young Spring was there wreathed with a floral crown.”
Yet Lightbown, Luchinat, Bull and others,10 also suggest an equally or even more important
literary connection to this painting in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 6, which seems to be an
implicit source for Botticelli, not a direct one, via the Stanze per la Giostra of Angelo Poliziano or
Politian (1454-94) which he summarized in verse. Politianus was the Latinized name of Mons
Politianus from his birth name Angelo da Montepulciano, as Lightbown and others also attest
Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
13
of his origins and literary work.11 Here is the original excerpt from the Homeric Hymn 6, later
reworked by Politian, in a translation from the Greek:
“I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful…There the moist breath of
the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, and
there the gold-filleted Hours welcomed her joyously. They clothed her with heavenly garments: on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold…and adorned her golden
necklaces over her soft neck and snow-white breasts…”12
In these lines we see the painting in this visual context, and again Venus-Aphrodite is “goldcrowned” in her hair alone, all other ornament unnecessary, although Botticelli has a few blue
ribbons bind some of her tresses. The “western wind” is of course Zephyr and Botticelli has
clearly painted his breath, aided by Aura’s, “wafting” Venus ashore with the “soft foam” seen
in the beaching shell. She is indeed welcomed, although not by a crowd of Hours, rather only
one in Chloris, herself garlanded instead of the goddess, although she might soon transfer
these myrtle and rose garlands to Venus. Botticelli also shows a “snow-white breast.” Lorenzo
de Medici’s scholar poet Politianus (Angelo Poliziano) was himself immortalized in Ghirlandaio’s fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, a sign of esteem for his poetic humanism.
Lucretius’ (1st c. BCE) De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) 1:1-43 could also be considered in some way as a literary source, however transformed in Medici court poetry like that of
Politianus, as the following dedicatory opening lines of Lucretius hint:
“Nurturing Venus, who beneath the smooth-moving heavenly signs fill with yourself
the sea…since through you every kind of living thing is conceived and rising up looks
on the light of the sun: from you, O goddess, from you the winds flee away, the clouds of
heaven from you and your coming; for you the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet
flowers, for you the wide stretches of ocean laugh, and heaven grown peaceful glows with
outpoured light. For as soon as the vernal face of day is made manifest, and the breeze of
the teeming west wind blows fresh and free…”13
The overlapping ideas are not obtuse. “Nurturing Venus” (alma Venus) is tied to celestial
movements – which motion Ficino develops at length in his Theologia Platonica – along with
the “wide stretches of ocean laugh” (rident aequora ponti) and “heaven’s outpoured light” (dif-
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Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
fuso lumine caelum) and “earth putting forth spring flowers” (tellus summittit flores), certainly
all common themes for Venusian spring, but especially “breeze of the teeming west wind
blows fresh and free” (reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni). Perhaps important here, the word
aura appears above in Lucretius, and this is the exact personified nymph (Aura) many agree
is she whom Zephyr embraces. Aura, of course, means “ breath of air” as the mate or double
of Zephyr, exactly as Botticelli paints.
Thus, sufficient texts in the literary background of the Birth of Venus leads to the conclusion that Botticelli was following some sort of visual template for an ekphrasis, bringing ancient literary text into an idiosyncratic but iconographically consistent framework, also likely
alluding Classical art in some way.
Already mentioned, one primary mythographic problem is that the cult of the love goddess – by whatever name – historically moved westward from the Near East across the Levant strait to Cyprus and then to Greece and beyond, not eastward from the Mediterranean
as the Homeric Hymn 6 implies in blown by the western wind. But this is not a problem for
Botticelli whose ekphrasis is carefully drawn.
Marsilio Ficino on Planetary Venus
Known to be more than just an occasional inspiration to Botticelli, the contemporary scholar
and Neoplatonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) revived the esteem for Plato in the
Renaissance.14 Ficino’s patron, like Botticelli’s, was Lorenzo de Medici, and it is probable
Botticelli learned some philosophy from Ficino and adapted some of his allegories. Deriving
his celestial and zodiacal mélange from the Roman Astronomica of the 1st c. astrologer Marcus
Manilius,15 Ficino mentioned the combined planetary-mythological Venus a few times in
his Theologia Platonica, a work attempting to reconcile Christianity and Classical paganism,
among other goals. Here Venus is one of the twelve Pythagorean divine souls associated
with Zodiacal constellations, in this case Taurus in the spring between April to May,16 in this
case again consistent with the spring context of the painting. Later in the same text, Ficino
associates Venus with Bacchus Lysius, the “loosener,” the liberating god of the vine’s vegetative power,17 when the power of spring is abundantly manifest in unstoppable growth, and
the Muse Erato, whose domain was lyric poetry. While not obviously connected to Ficino’s
Venus references, there are clear seasonal clues in this painting emphasizing late spring,
from Zephyr on the left to Venus landing onshore to the Hora of Spring on the right. The
painting is at least somewhat consistent with Ficino’s philosophy of Venus, not the Venus
Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
15
who is responsible for lust but the Venus who personifies beauty, like the Platonic ideal to
which humans were to ascend on the ladder of love already mentioned. Ficino would have
been familiar with this but Botticelli less so.
As Gombrich pointed out in 1945, one of Ficino’s letters to Botticelli contained this quote:
“The planets like Venus and Mars are allegorical of the virtues to which young men
can aspire…”18
While Venus here is planetary rather than mythological, Ficino’s syncretic philosophy
could, like the desire of early Gnostic Christianity to see its roots growing from a plethora of
fertile sources, already encompass the synthesis of Venus the myth goddess with the Virgin
Mary, both of them Regina Caeli, and Venus the planet could also easily presage dawn and
birth as a shining celestial queen. In Theologia Platonica, 18.9, Ficino’s philosophy, however,
could be easily applied to this painting: “The beauty of the body lies not in the shadow of
matter but in the light and grace of form; not in darkness, but in clear proportion; not in sluggish and senseless weight, but in harmonious number and measure.” Although Ficino in his
writing allegorized Venus philosophically from her “primeval” source – the spilled seed of
Uranus at his castration – Lightbown also maintains this painting is less intentional of personal allusions and more a celebration of love and beauty.19
Selected Possible Allegories
Nevertheless, much has been made of possible allegories in the painting. In the last century
or so, Aby Warburg and later Ernst Gombrich along with E. Panofsky, Levi d’Ancona20 and
others have offered somewhat complementary versions of possible allegories influenced by
the relationship between Marsilio Ficino and Botticelli, among others. Holmes noted its “precarious balance of myth and naturalism” and how it combined “Classical legend, ecclesiastical painting [in the Madonna-like innocence of Venus], literary spiritualism and aristocratic
enjoyment of the pleasures of life.”21 That the painting has some allegorical elements is difficult to deny; what it meant to Botticelli and the Medici is more convoluted and virtually
impossible to gloss. The clearest suggestion of some form of allegory – despite the point of
Lightbown that it is likely not personal allusion but celebration of love and perhaps nuptials22 - are the elements not so easy to find in literary or artistic precedents. Some of these
possibilities are discussed below, but mostly posed as tenuous questions.
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First, the falling and floating roses are one such possible symbolic element, in many senses
emblematic of love. If roses here conjoin earthly and celestial love in the combined personae
of pagan Venus and the Christian Virgin Mary, some of this joining may be related to Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonist philosophy, although that connection is not compelling between
Venus and Mary or even to Ficino despite the previous paragraph on Ficino’s ruminations
on Venus. Although the shell later comes to be associated with Mary, it was often a symbol
of feminine sexuality and certainly long identified with Venus before borrowed into Mary’s
iconography. The descending roses in this image perfectly fit Botticelli’s modest Venus, in
fact, none of them yet touch the ground. Botticelli’s use of roses may in fact represent a celestial Venus Urania. Quoting Aghion, Barbillou and Lissarrague:
“Plato in fact contrasted Aphrodite Urania (celestial), goddess of chaste and pure love,
with Aphrodite Pandemos (popular), patroness of carnal love.” 23
That the roses come from above is clear in the blossoms that have landed on the nymph
wings of Aura: they precede the blowing or come from higher up. Thereby not all plants are
earthly. Thus, this invisible source of the roses is a higher domain than earth and suggests
a divine blessing higher than earthly love can muster. Reminding perhaps of Plato’s Symposium - Ficino also completed his Symposium commentary in 146924 - all the forms of Beauty,
always desirable but in different ways, should call humans to higher planes of love, moving
from Eros and the physical love to love of the Soul and ultimately Beauty itself, here personified not in a Venus who brings us not to lust but in a purer Venus who brings us to contemplation of Beauty. When the seeking human soul identifies more and more with Beauty, it
becomes more like that which it seeks. Whatever tenuous connection Plato’s forms of Beauty
might have with Botticelli’s Venus is probably casual at best, nonetheless his Venus here is
just such an icon drawing viewers to Beauty herself.
Second, as mentioned, although this overall combined context is necessary in the story,
the four elements of earth, air, fire and water are somewhat symbolically present in sky, sea,
land and golden light. Zephyr the god of the west wind represents air as does Aura (“breath”
or “vapor”) with him, both their feet suspended in air. The diagonal line of breath Botticelli
has painted, with which they blow Venus shoreward, is mobile air manifest in its kinetic
form. Chloris, the Hora of Spring, has her feet touching the ground, representing earth. Venus herself rides across the sea, carried by a marine shell her feet touch only inches from
Renaissance Visions: Myth and Art
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the foamy water, and she is born out of its watery waves. The golden hair of Venus and the
golden light reflected throughout the painting from the right at dawn’s source also represent
the sun and its power as fire personified. The separate groupings of figures also highlights
their different domains as none of the figures actually touch each other (excepting Zephyr
and Aura) with earth, sea and sky combined at the horizon but not without distinct lines
between them. Whether or not the four elements – or at least the three obvious ones in sky,
sea and land - are even important other than as necessary geographic indicators is difficult
to establish.
Third, other than the roses, the garlands and other flowers shown in the painting can be
seen as traditional but also idiosyncratic here, since they do not seem to appear in historic
precedents for the birth of Venus. The myrtle and rose garlands around Chloris are logical
for Venus, especially the myrtle pectoral since the Romans worshipped Venus Murtia (or
Murcia) as “Venus of the Myrtle,” and myrtle was also a plant grown around temples of Venus. As Pollini has noted, myrtle was associated with lovemaking and inspiring love, as seen
in Horace’s Carmen I.4.5, 9-10, and also identified with the conquering Venus Victrix.25 That
the pectoral myrtle is over Chloris’ heart and around her neck is apropos: it does not overwhelm her mind with passion, nor is the myrtle around her brow as Horace mentions; higher
reason is thus seemingly unaffected. Bull notes that “the link between Venus and weddings
was an ancient one, for it was her girdle, the ceston, that legitimized marriages.”26 If the grove
of trees are ambiguously laurel along with citrus, this is relevant in that Lorenzo de Medici
identified with the Laurus nobilis not only by his Latinized name (Laurentius) but also by its
Apollonian role in inspiration, as many have pointed out.27 The cattails are the most puzzling
plant elements, as mentioned, because they are not in this habitat. The cornflowers (fiordaliso)
and marguerites, while also symbolic of love, are equally or mostly signifiers of spring, as
is the anemone, also apropos as a “wind-flower” because of Zephyr. Therefore, the overall
painting’s plant context signals spring - along with love – probably more than anything else.
Dempsey’s caution on overt plant symbolism in the Primavera28 is also wise to remember
here.
While Aura the nymph is an apparent visual invention of Botticelli here in the painting (although the antecedent word aura appeared in Lucretius’ text), at least accompanying
Zephyr, by being so close in his embrace, she also in some way exemplifies unifying love as
these two fly embracing through the sky. They touch bodily, although without much flesh
contact except in their heads and her arms around his waist. Otherwise, their cloaks barely
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separate them, and Zephyr’s blue cloak emphasizes his sky domain. Thus, that Botticelli paints
both Zephyr and Aura as double but united winds
(note Coleridge’s idea that “unity implies multeity”) echoes text as well.
Finally, the birth of Venus is also simply the
birth of spring. The season of spring is traditionally identified as the season for love, but this is
less allegory than an accepted method of representing the seasonal cycles of time in space. That
more intricate symbolism and contemplative allegory might be possible in the painting is certainly
feasible, but best approached with caution.
Classical Venus Antecedents in Art
Famous sculptural Venus images abound from antiquity, especially in Roman art, but surviving examples similar to Botticelli’s of Venus at her birth
are less so. The most quoted sculptural examples are
often categorized as Venus pudica forms. Among
others, Horne noted this Venus stands “in the
attitude of the Medicean Venus.”29 Venus figures
Botticelli might have seen include the marble
Medici Venus (1st c. BCE) also at the Uffizi in
Florence, as well as the Capitoline Venus (2nd c.
CE) in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, the Cnidian Venus (or Aphrodite of Knidos) (2nd c. CE)
in the Vatican Collection, a Roman copy purportedly based on the Praxiteles original, among others. The most logical sculptural antecedents not
only were known in his day as sufficiently local,
but have the added compelling gestures using the
same arms to shield right breast and genitals. Of
Capitoline Venus
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these primary Venus types, only the Medici Venus satisfies all such requisites, although its
presence cannot be easily attested at the end of the fifteenth century in Florence for Botticelli
to have used it as his model. It also adds a shell and a dolphin as accompanying motif, which
elements suggest it also connects to the birth of Venus.
The idea of a Venus Marina linked to the sea is also useful for Roman antecedents, but such
painted images have not survived well from antiquity nor were many directly known to the
Renaissance. The suggested Venus Anadyomene image as seen in Pompeiian wall-painting
would not have been yet excavated for several centuries, but even if a popular form, its
primary resemblances are the nudity of the goddess and the seashell, whereas its Venus is
supine, unlike Botticelli’s. Classical paintings are sometimes mentioned in Roman texts. For
example, literary accounts via Pliny (Natural History 35.91ff) of the Venus birth painting of
Apelles (4th c. BCE), “Venus emerging from the sea” (Venerem exeuntem a mari) for which the
lovely courtesan Phryne may have also modeled (like the Calumny), have sometimes been
discussed as ekphrases for Botticelli. But Pliny does not describe it amply, noting that it was
dedicated by Augustus to his adoptive father Caesar’s shrine.
So surviving Roman art examples of the birth of Venus are not as numerous in the Renaissance as to provide Botticelli a range of poses form which to choose, although the clear
resemblance of his Venus to the Medici Venus is close enough to suffice.
Conclusion
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, c. 1484, is a touchstone, iconic for the Renaissance despite not being a painting that seems to have influenced many others if we accept Bull’s word. What it
represents now is not necessarily how it was envisioned at the end of the fifteenth century,
but it has always been much loved from the beginning. If it is the most beautiful painting in
the world, as some insist, it may be because the artist eliminated all extraneous distractions
in order to distill his profound subject to its essence. But what is its subject?
Regardless of any attempts at wrapping an allegorical structure around this pioneering
work – more apropos but often equally unyielding in his Primavera of 1482 – the Birth of Venus may best represent Botticelli’s ideal of Beauty, and that is its most likely subject. Whether
or not as some say, that the artist also secretly loved Simonetta Vespucci, the most likely
model for Venus, it is endearingly understandable that love itself can animate such art and
elevate it to the highest level, as in Plato’s Symposium. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus heralds for
so many the real Birth of the Renaissance (although that seems a tautology), free from reli-
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gious piety and instead shining out the message of rebirth for both intellect and soul. In this
painting, Beauty dawns anew for the inquiring spirit.