Venus and I shall be discussing with you what the painting is really about. This is the

painting. It is a very very well known painting which is why I'm discussing it, but I want

to give some indication of the range of ways a painting like this can be discussed. It's

a celebrated work of art, it is the high point of a visit to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

It is a major tourist attraction, it's in the biggest room, it has the biggest crowd in front

of it. There's more to it than that. It's also seen as a cultural icon and a commercial

asset so you often see the image called upon for all kinds of merchandise from t-shirts

to garden ornaments. And then it's renowned as a landmark of European art. But we can examine

with paining in other ways too and I'm going to do so in relation to a series of specific

questions so they're all framed as question so we'll begin like this and carry on our

first of all what is the painting's subject? This isn't really very difficult to answer.

There's a figure of Venus, goddess of love in the middle standing in a shell being washed

up on a beach blown there by the winds you see on the left and welcomed by a maiden that

you see on the right so that's the subject but then there's this puzzling question perhaps

of why is it that so many people like this painting so much it must be something to do

with the kind of linearity and harmonious design it must be to do with the clarity and

the brightness of the colors, the use of gold and so on so it has all the features in addition

to this presentation of a beautiful young woman at the paintings centre I might want

to add at this point that the painting today probably isn't quite as glorious as it was

originally when the colours would have been brighter especially the greens of the trees

and the blue of the sky so it would originally have been a feast of color another question

we might ask of the painting and I'll come back to this later is whether we think the

painting has any faults. We might want to think about whether he could have done the

anatomy of the woman better or whether he could have represented the trees more accurately

or whether he could have done a more detailed or more logical landscape behind. And in some

senses these can all be regarded as not at the forefront of the leaders of renaissance

painting in his time. But I want to come back to that point in a little while's time. We

can also link the painting or can we to particular innovations in art at this particular moment.

Two in particular comes to mind and the third follows from that first of all there is the

novelty of representing the nude. The nude woman. It's a very unusual occurrence. There

are very few paintings of nude individuals nude within from the heart beforehand. They

are usually restricted to representations or Eve such as the one I'm showing you on

the right. What we have here is an image or a beautiful woman flouting the beauty and

one who is unusually and remarkably in direct engagement with the viewer and this is a very

striking characteristic of this world. Then there is the novelty of mythological art and

this in the 1480s was very much a new type of painting. So a painting of the Olympian

gods dealing with mythological subject. And from that we can then begin to think about

how the painting could have connected with mythological texts. There are texts of many

kinds which are connectable to this painting. So for example there is a description by the

Roman writer Pliny of a famous painting by the famous Greek artists Apennes on the subject

of Venus rising from the sea, which is the subject of Botticelli's painting. There are

also passages poems, which deal with Venus in remarkably similar ways. This is an extract

from a Homeric hymn. It goes like this. Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful Aphrodite

I shall sing, to whose domain belong the battlements of all sea-laved Cyprus where, blown by the

moist breath of Zephyrus, she was carried over the waves of the resounding sea on soft

foam. The gold-filleted Horae - personifications of the time of the day - happily welcomed

her and clothed her with heavenly raiment. . So this is an ancient Greek poem known at

the time which has similarities with the painting. but we might want to consider just how closely

or otherwise the painting actually corresponds with the story. There are many similarities

but there is not a one-to-one correspondence. But equally we can find modern texts such

as the famous poem by Angelo Poliziano ou alone, although chaste, may safely enter the

realm of Venus and Love; you alone rule over love poetry; often Love himself comes to sing

with you; having put down the quiver from his shoulder, he tries the strings of your

beautiful lyre. But joyful Spring is never absent: she unfolds her blonde and curling

hair to the breeze and ties a thousand flowers in a garland. This army accompanies your sons,

fair Venus, mother of the cupids. Zephyr - the West Wind - bathes the meadow with dew, spreading

a thousand lovely fragrances: wherever he flies he clothes the countryside in roses,

lilies, violets, and other flowers; the grass marvels at its own beauties, white blue, pale,

and red. So again we have a poem. It can be thought of as being similar in all sorts of

respect to the painting but the two are simply not the same. People have often said they're

pretty much the same but they're not and there are other explanations of our painting which

we might want to consider. What other factors might want to consider? Well the first of

these would be to consider the suitability of the painting to a particular kind of location.

Now we don't want that location was originally but there are some clues. So for example the

painting is executed very unusually on canvas. It is first mentioned in the 16th century

as being located in a villa Medici near Florence. So we're dealing with a transportable work

of art which may well have been intended for a villa location. So who was the person responsible

for having it painted? Well it was almost certainly painted for Lorenzo de Medici, that

is Lorenzo the Magnificent or some close associate of his. That is why the painting features

prominently laurel in the background because the Latin and Italian words for laurel chime

with the name Lorenzo. So I'm seeking to find explanation for the laurel and the explanation

would seem to be the similarity with the name Lorenzo. As for the sort of room that would

have been painted for. Well that's rather hard because such rooms really don't exist

very much in Florence. What I'm showing you here is a fourteenth-century room in Florence

of a kind where I'm proposing the painting might originally have been located. So it's

sort of multi-purpose room, richly decorated, but I want to draw your attention to some

of the decorations. The rich colors, the Arcadian treatment of stories around an upper frieze

which depict amorous matter this is in some general sense like the subject matter of the

Birth of Venus. Or here's another room in the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence and I just

want to draw your attention to the imitation wall hangings of on the wall which perhaps

helps us understand why there is a kind of aspect to the Birth of Venus which may remind

us of tapestries. So it's the kind of work of art which would fit into an environment

of the sort that I'm representing in these interiors from Palazzo Davanzati. But there

are other kinds of reading we can also take from our painting. So we can think about the

painting for example as a representation of philosophical ideas and as some kind of allegory.

It's not too difficult to think this through. So for example if we know that Venus is the

goddess of love we can surely see that the painting represents the arrival in the world

of Venus or in other words of love. So it's about the coming to the world of the representative

of love. We can also notice associations which are immediately relevant with works of art

of other kinds. What I'm showing you here is a comparison between Botticelli and a much

earlier work by Florentine artist Lorenzo Ghiberti of the baptism of Christ and I'm

hoping you're going to agree that the compositions are remarkably similar. So there are fluttering

angels on the left. There is a naked little figure in the middle and there is a kind of

figure with an outstretched arm on the right-hand side standing in front of the tree and the

central figure is in both cases immersed in water. So the question is why did Botticelli

make his painting so like a traditional representation of a baptism? And the answer is presumably

to do with the meaning of baptisms. Because the baptism represents the inauguration of

the ministry of Christ on earth in the world. So correspondingly Botticelli's painting represents

the inauguration of the ministry of love in the world. But you're supposed to see the

similarities with a baptism in Botticelli's image of the Birth of Venus which would therefore

have a comparable meaning. There are other dimensions to this to which I won't go in

to very much but if we think of the painting as representing the arrival of Venus it can

then have a political dimension. The arrival of Venus is being associated with laurel,

which references Lorenzo the magnificent, and the many flowers in the painting are then

representative of Florence. The word meaning city of flowers. So love is being associated

with Florence and with Lorenzo de Medici. There are in addition other visual illusions

that are made by the painting to the extent that we might begin to want to consider the

painting to be an example of what I'm going to call visual poetry. So for instance the

idea of the goddess of love being born from a shell is an idea, which is borrowed out

of ancient Roman art, which sometimes depicts the goddess Venus has been encased in a shell.

and then each of the individual groups in the painting can likewise be equated by examples

of past art. so it's quite obvious I think that the pose and deportment the central figure

recalls representations of Venus in ancient art. It's less well known that the group

of flying figures, the winds on the left inside, chime with representations of such figures

on in ancient Roman art such as this glorious cup I'm showing on the left hand side which

was a possession of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Then the figure on the right seems to be rather

closely related to representations of maidens which you can again find in ancient relief

sculpture known at this particular moment. So the thing sort of borrows from all sorts

of sources and puts them together into a new configuration and in such a way that you could

think about bits and pieces of the painting and make all sorts of association both with

ideas and with other works of art. Now finally I'm going to come back to the problem which

I mentioned at the start which is the painting advanced or otherwise in its style? It's

very flat. It's very unsophisticated from the point of view of the minuteness of the

representation of nature. It makes a big comparison with another work from around the same period

this time of a baptism by Andrea del Verrocio and Leonardo Da Vinci. So the compositions

are similar but the painting on the right by Verrocio and Leonardo is all about nature.

All about atmosphere. all about shadows. All about detailed representation of landscape.

And in connection with landscape it is quite interesting to note that Leonardo said of

Botticelli - Botticelli paints very sorry landscapes. So taking all this into account

we might very reasonably conclude that the painting falls short of some people's ideas

of a notion of artistic advancement. So that is the case, but the question then is does

the painting's style actually contribute to its subject and its merits and I'm proposing

that it does. It's not about reality, it's about a world of the imagination. It is set

out in this very clear way, sequential way that allows you to dwell on the significance

of the subject and the beauties of the subject. So that is part of the point of the painting.

So here we are at the end of this short lecture and the question I hope is do we understand

this painting a little bit better that we did at the start and the answer is that I

hope we do! Thank you all very much