Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" Formal Analysis

Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus differs in style from those of his contemporaries, as it seems to ignore the recent knowledge of anatomy and perspective. Painted on canvas using tempura circa 1484-1486, Botticelli depicts the mythical scene of the birth of the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Venus. Floating atop a cockleshell, recently borne from the foam of the sea, Venus is lead ashore to her sacred Cyprus by the breath of the wind goddess, Zephyrus, accompanied by his wife, the flower goddess, Chloris. Eagerly anticipating the goddess’s arrival, the nymph Pomona stands on the shore’s edge, ready to swath the newborn, more powerful goddess, cloak in hand.

Botticelli illustrates Venus in the center of the painting, larger than life, nude and starkly white in color, deliberately gaining the viewers immediate attention. The artist streams light from some unseen sun, radiating from right to left. Even with the overall brightness of the painting, Botticelli emphasizes Venus’s importance further as he illuminates the right side of her figure, allowing the sun’s rays to adorn her with a slightly orange glow. Complemented by the orange tint of her long, wavy hair, this glow contrasts greatly with the light blue of the sea as well as the light blue of the ribbon in her hair. Thus, Botticelli again emphasizes the goddess’s importance. The goddess represents arrant perfection; her soft, yet moderately toned physique, embodies a powerful youthfulness. Botticelli adds to the love goddess’s girlishness by depicting her with flushed cheeks, pinkish lips, and bright eyes. Magnifying her innocence further, the artist places her right arm over her breast, and the left over her “mons veneris”, creating the illusion of embarrassment. Her head is inclined faintly to the left, back towards the sea, but the rest of her body seems to be leaning toward the shore on the right; her left leg is cocked back as if she is about to step off the shell, and onto the shore next to Pomona.

Botticelli combines two major elements of composition in his masterpiece: the golden ratio as well as a hint of an oval composition. The unnaturally large Venus sits in the center of the painting, and from feet to toes, she almost spans the entire width of the canvas. The canvas’s dimensions themselves are that of the golden mean (1.6). Botticelli exemplifies Venus’s importance yet again as he creates the illusion of oval composition: beginning with Pomona’s head, the cloak and the nymph’s arm’s curve up towards the head of Venus; the line continues as it bends over the top of the conjoined Zephyrus and Chloris’s heads; then with Zephyrus’s outstretched, arched left arm, followed by a bent wrist and fingers; all finished by the fluid meander of the cockle shell, and the fold of Pomona’s right knee.

Botticelli adds to the mystical feel of the painting as he refuses to follow the scientifically correct rules of perception. Venus’s size is about equal to the body of the male Zephyrus, despite the fact that Zephyrus is behind the goddess, so that he is able to push her ashore. The angle of Chloris’s knee, wrapped around her husband’s body, is not anatomically possible. Her feet are the same size, although one is clearly intended to be in closer to the viewer than the other.  Even the artist’s atmospheric perception is inaccurate: the waves in the distance are far too large in comparison to those in the foreground; the brown tree trunks ashore are all approximately the same width, despite the obvious deviations in location.