The Birth of Venus

Botticelli painted it in Florence in the mid-1480s, possibly for a member of the Medici family. Venus, born from the sea fully grown, is blown ashore on a shell by Zephyr, the west wind, while a woman on land waits to cover her with a cloak. A nude this large, and a scene from ancient myth on this scale, had hardly been seen since antiquity. It is painted in tempera on two pieces of canvas sewn together, a cheaper support than the wooden panels used for most important pictures then. It hung at the Medici villa at Castello until 1815, when it moved to the Uffizi.

Medium

Tempera on canvas

Size

278.5 x 172.5 cm

Where

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.