Botticelli’s Aesthetic

By BarbaraAnne:

Sandro Botticelli’s Venus c.1486 emerges from the sea as a full-grown woman. A sea shell carries her to the shore. The Medici family collected a Greek sculpture of Venus, the pose of which Botticelli copied. In stone and in paint, Venus has a full, voluptuous, generous body. I wish we had this aesthetic today, so society’s bipolar madness wouldn’t swing between morbidly obese and anorexic moods.

However, Venus’s most amazing feature is her red hair. Seaweed ties it back. Some of it is so long, it can cover her body. Other parts swing with the wind. The artist created hair with paint that couldn’t be created in stone, hair that mirrored the sensuality of her body.

It is an ideal women strive for to this day.

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