The Birth of Venus

The story of The Birth of Venus

Venus stands on a shell that has just drifted ashore, her hair caught in the wind, while two wind spirits blow her in from the left and a woman on the right rushes forward with a cloak. Botticelli painted it around 1485 for the Medici family, on canvas rather than the usual wood panel, and it hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. It is not realistic and does not try to be. The figures are weightless, the sea is a pattern of little white chevrons, and the whole thing floats like a tapestry, which is exactly why it has stayed lovable for five hundred years.

This is one of the friendliest paintings you can put on a wall. The colors are pale sea green, soft sky blue, blush pink, and Venus's gold hair, with roses drifting through the air, so it lightens a room rather than dominating it. It suits a bedroom, a bathroom, a bright living room, or a dressing area, and it works with coastal, Mediterranean, feminine, and pastel interiors. It is a very wide image. The Large at 38.2 × 24 in is the size that gives it a proper wall of its own, and the Extra Large at 57.3 × 36 in turns it into a headboard-scale statement. The Medium at 25.5 × 16 in is right over a vanity or a dresser.

Its sister painting, Primavera, was made for the same family and hangs in the same gallery. Venus and Mars is Botticelli's other long, horizontal mythology, and Titian's Venus of Urbino shows what Venice did with the same goddess fifty years on. More from Sandro Botticelli.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the Uffizi canvas, with the tempera's chalky, matte surface preserved rather than glossed over.