Looooots of literary examples come to mind, though there’s probably nothing more cheap-ass cheap than when a series mystery/suspense writer kills off any and all potential romantic partners for the main character (cough… Tami Hoag). Ettlingers": Leopold Ettlinger with Helen S. Ettlinger, Botticelli, 1976, Thames and Hudson (World of Art), ISBN 0500201536 To Venus’ right (our left) are two figures in the air, busy blowing towards Venus. They have been identified as the Greek god Zephyr, associated with the west winds. He was one of the gentler winds, associated with the beginnings of Spring. Some of his stylistic influences that contributed to how he portrayed perspective, space, and figure’s stances in his paintings came from the Byzantine and International Gothic styles.

It is also believed that Lorenzo il Magnifico commissioned Botticelli’s other paintings Pallas and the Centaur (c. 1482) and La Primavera (c. 1482 to 1483) as part of a wedding gift for his cousin. There is debate as to who exactly commissioned these paintings. urn:oclc:877664382 Scandate 20100127173230 Scanner scribe5.sfdowntown.archive.org Scanningcenter sfdowntown Source The Neoplatonic philosophical meaning is then clear: the work would mean the birth of love and the spiritual beauty as a driving force of life.Having a large standing female nude as the central focus was unprecedented in post-classical Western painting, and certainly drew on the classical sculptures which were coming to light in this period, especially in Rome, where Botticelli had spent 1481–82 working on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. [38] The pose of Botticelli's Venus follows the Venus Pudica ("Venus of Modesty") type from classical antiquity, where the hands are held to cover the breasts and groin; in classical art this is not associated with the new-born Venus Anadyomene. What became a famous example of this type is the Venus de' Medici, a marble sculpture that was in a Medici collection in Rome by 1559, which Botticelli may have had opportunity to study (the date it was found is unclear). [39] aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly. [29] A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love. I don’t know if I would call The Birth of Venus ending cheap. Quite. Without what happens in the end you don’t have the events that set the stage in the prologue, without which you wouldn’t have the same hook. Not the same story, really.

The Medici commissioned the Birth of Venus, including the works Pallas and the Centaur and the Allegory of Spring at the Uffizi, and these belonged to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Copy of Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles, 4th century; Museo nazionale romano di palazzo Altemps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But I’m glad I waited and borrowed it from the library. I keep having that experience with literary fiction, where it starts out brilliantly, then peters out. Or cheaps out. I can handle a downer ending as long as it’s not cheap.

The surrounding landscape is also rich in color tones, for example, the cooler colors like the light blue of the ocean and sky meet the warmer and deeper color tones and shades of green and brown from the land. There is also more shading around the right side of the painting as we approach the forested area. It also points to the stylistic influences on Botticelli at the time, which we will discuss further below. The theme comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a very important oeuvre of the Latin literature. Venus is portrayed naked on a shell on the seashore; on her left the winds blow gently caressing her hair with a shower of roses, on her right a handmaid (Ora) waits for the goddess to go closer to dress her shy body. The meadow is sprinkled with violets, symbol of modesty but often used for love potions.

Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. The two-dimensionality of this painting may be a deliberate attempt to evoke the style of ancient Greek vase painting or frescos on the walls of Etruscan tombs, [41] the only types of ancient painting known to Botticelli. Profile portrait of a young woman (probably Simonetta) (between 1475 and 1480) by Sandro Botticelli, depicting Italian noblewoman Simonetta Vespucci; Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By dramatising the relations between work, freedom and gender, and at the same time casting the action in the harsh, distant past, Venus will involve readers without being too confronting; a compelling mix. Spirited, talented and super-intelligent, Alessandra is chaperoned wherever she goes. Fifteen years old and bursting with independence, she knows she will only get her freedom through marriage, and then only relatively and for as long as the marriage lasts: if her husband dies it's straight into the convent. Worse still, Alessandra is compelled to paint at a time when the practice of art is forbidden to women. Since early childhood she has been secretly living her dream, but she realises that without a teacher she can't make progress.