Florentine painter of The Birth of Venus
A leading painter of the early Renaissance in Florence, under the patronage of the Medici. In an age dominated by religious themes, he boldly revived Greco-Roman myth, painting The Birth of Venus and Primavera — the goddess arriving over the sea on a shell, her lines flowing and graceful as poetry. In his later years, swept up in the friar Savonarola’s religious fervor, his style turned devout and somber, and he is said to have burned some of his own "pagan" works.
In The Birth of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty stands nude upon a giant shell, drifting in from the sea, her long hair and thin veil flowing in the wind. It is among the first Western paintings since the Middle Ages to show a pagan goddess life-size and frontally nude — a declaration that the beauty of the human body itself was once again a subject worthy of praise.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.