El nacimiento de Venus, Botticelli

Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who 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 Creator.

 In the Birth of Venus, Venus' body is anatomically improbable, with elongated neck and torso. The bodies and poses of the winds to the left are even harder to figure out. The background is summary, and the figures cast no shadows. It is clear that this is a fantasy image.

El nacimiento de Venus, Botticelli

                         Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful

                         Aphrodite I shall sing to whose domain

                         belong the battlements of all sea-loved

                         Cyprus where, blown by the moist breath

                         of Zephyros, she was carried over the

                         waves of the resounding sea on soft foam.

                         The gold-filleted Horae happily welcomed

                          her and clothed her with heavenly raiment.                                        

                                        Himno Homérico 

Sandra y Jenifer 4ºA