“The Birth of Venus, we often hear, depicts the ideal woman. Yet half a millennium after Sandro Botticelli painted it, how many of us whose tastes run to the female form really see it that way? ‘I’ve always been struck by how Venus is strangely asexual, and her nudity is clinical,’ says gallerist James Payne, creator of the Youtube channel Great Art Explained. ‘Maybe that’s because she represents sex as a necessary function: sex for procreation, the ultimate goal in a dynastic marriage.’ This, safe to say, isn’t the sort of thing that gets most of us going in the 21st century. ...”
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486). Tempera on canvas.
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