Original subtitles

I think The Birth Of Venus is actually an almost perfect portrayal

of the philosophy of the Renaissance.

Somebody looking at this...

...would see an ideal woman.

She is almost improving on nature.

It's an idealised beauty, that's really, really important.

In the heart of the Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli

was about to create a masterpiece,

something that would define beauty for centuries.

He wanted us to understand that this is otherworldly.

She really has become the epitome of ideal beauty.

In a time of shifting ideals,

he dared to imagine something ancient made new again,

a goddess rising from the sea untouched by the modern world.

I think that there's the element of this painting that it is decorative,

and the colours and the composition aid that.

It's a technical masterpiece.

With each brushstroke, beauty and myth come to life.

And when it's finished, she stands before you, The Birth Of Venus.

This painting is without doubt

one of the most popular paintings in the Uffizi.

It's one of the most reproduced paintings

in the shop and the street vendors.

Every single iPhone cover and tea towel and so forth

is covered with this painting. And yet, Botticelli,

whilst he was extremely popular in his own day,

fell almost completely out of favour.

I think there's a very simple answer to why this fell out of favour,

and I think the reason is because he backed the wrong horse.

Although we admire Botticelli's masterpieces today

as some of the greatest achievements of the Renaissance,

what many don't realise is the artist himself

became entangled in the political and religious turmoil of his time.

His patrons were the Medici family,

and the Medici family were ruling Florence.

Now the Medici family are going to be ousted by Savonarola.

Savonarola would rise to power in Florence after the Medicis.

His regime was driven by religion and Puritanism.

And he's the mad monk who's going to burn all of the possessions

in the squares in Florence, in the bonfires of the vanity,

and he's going to take over Florence

and the Medicis are going to be ousted.

A figure whose rise challenged their authority

and condemned the very ideals Botticelli once painted so vividly.

Eventually, he gets too powerful and he is executed,

and Botticelli is left behind in Florence,

and then the Medicis come back.

The Medicis returned to power in 1512 after Botticelli's death,

but it was too late for his reputation.

His association with Savonarola

likely diminished his standing in Florence,

so as a result Botticelli's work fell out of favour.

And I think he fell out of favour with the Medicis

for that specific reason.

Plus by this time, you've got Leonardo coming in,

you've got Michelangelo coming in, and he just fell out of fashion.

That's really as simple as it is.

But how did Botticelli and this masterpiece

regain the recognition it deserved?

Let's jump forward in time to find out.

Well, the Uffizi actually becomes a public museum

in the 18th century. And when it does become a public museum

there's pretty much no Botticelli in evidence.

It's not until the 19th century that the decision was taken

to create a sort of chronology of Italian art.

"Oh, well, we better include Botticelli."

After centuries of obscurity,

Botticelli's work was once again brought into the spotlight.

And The Birth Of Venus is included in that synopsis,

but Primavera is not. Primavera is still kept in storage.

So loads of Botticelli is in storage in the 19th century.

It seems absolutely crazy.

Until a number of art historians and critics,

and particularly artists, started to look at his work afresh.

And one of those groups of artists is the Pre-Raphaelite group.

They love the decorative aspect of Botticelli's paintings,

those subtle colours, this ornamentation,

this idealisation of feminine beauty.

So when you look at a lot of Pre-Raphaelite women,

they look very much like Botticelli.

The Pre-Raphaelites loved him,

the Pre-Raphaelites absolutely adored him.

He really encapsulates that whole romantic concept

the Pre-Raphaelites were interested in.

If you look at any Pre-Raphaelite painting,

you can see the influence of this painting.

It's often assumed that the Pre-Raphaelites

were interested in Raphael. They weren't,

they were interested in what was before Raphael.

And, unfortunately, thanks partly to the writings of Giorgio Vasari,

the world's first art historian, you might say, in the 16th century,

he creates this idea of almost a bronze age

and silver age and golden age of art.

And who's at the height of the golden age?

It's Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

And then there becomes this tendency rather

to overlook artists that came before.

Overshadowed by the towering figures of the High Renaissance,

Botticelli's delicate poetic style fell out of step.

His mythological visions and spiritual grace

were set aside as the world turned toward precision and anatomy.

For a time, Botticelli was little more than a footnote in art history,

a genius hidden in plain sight.

So there's this rebirth of interest, thank goodness,

in Botticelli, as I say, partly or largely thanks to artists themselves

who see a reflection of many of their own ideals and aspirations

in his magnificent paintings.

I think she really has become the epitome

of ideal female beauty.

She is just such a magnificent homage

to youth and beauty.

I think there's nothing quite like this painting, actually.

And I think it really stands out. First of all, it's so huge.

It's a very big painting. This is another one of those paintings

that you need to see in real life just to realise how huge it is.

This is the first time we see a full-scale nude in Western art

outside of a religious context.

And I do think the shock of that idea

has passed down the centuries.

And that's what's made it so iconic.

But in many ways, this is a paradox. In many ways,

this is reflective of how we see beauty in the modern world,

because, actually, it's a very, very strange body.

I want you to have a look, for example,

at her left shoulder and her left arm.

The proportion of that shoulder is really, really strange.

It almost looks like that left arm is made out of plasticine

and it has been stretched out of all proportion.

She has very, very long limbs.

And if you look at the nymph on the left-hand side,

probably Cloris, and she's grabbing hold of Zephyr, the wind,

have a look at her body, then have a look at her neck,

and then have a look at her legs, and try and work out

how those legs are attached to that body.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

It's completely nonsensical.

It's completely anatomically inaccurate.

But somehow... it doesn't matter.

I think The Birth Of Venus is actually an almost perfect portrayal

of the philosophy of the Renaissance.

It's an idealised beauty.

That's really, really important. It's an idealised form.

The difference between this painting and those of the later Renaissance

is that this is a mythological subject.

So it's not about reality. It's different in that context.

We can take the form of Venus,

and she is the perfect concept of the Renaissance.

In 15th century Florence, nudity outside of religious

or classical context was considered daring.

Artistic depictions of the nude were typically reserved

for biblical figures like Adam and Eve.

Yet Botticelli's Venus boldly breaks from this convention,

modestly covering herself in the ancient Venus pudica pose.

Her nudity is neither overtly erotic nor entirely innocent.

I think the key to this painting is sex.

I think this is about sex, but not sex for pleasure,

this is about sex for procreation.

And I think the idea is that Venus is about to step off that shell.

She's not off the shell yet, she's just about to step onto the island,

and she's going to make that island bloom and blossom as child bearers.

So it's about sex as procreation.

We think about what an ideal woman is supposed to look like today.

Probably large breasts, a very, very small waist,

lots of long hair, long limbs.

That's not so dissimilar from what an ideal woman

was supposed to look like in the 15th century.

During the Renaissance, everyone from poets to philosophers

had something to say about the ideal woman.

These weren't just abstract ideas, they shaped the art of the time.

Writers such as Leon Battista Alberti,

one of the era's greatest thinkers, believed that true beauty

lay in symmetry, virtue, and a quiet dignity,

all qualities Venus seems to radiate.

One of these quotes comes from the writings of Leon Battista Alberti,

who wrote various treatises, one on architecture,

one on painting, but he actually wrote one about the family as well.

And in that, he says, "The natural philosophers

require that a woman be neither thin nor fat.

They find that a woman is most suited to bear children

if she has limbs of ample length."

And then when we look at a slightly later source,

this is a source from Brescia, also in Italy in the early 16th century,

this is almost like a checklist.

"Long the hair, the hands, and the legs.

Tiny the teeth, the ears, and the breasts.

Large the forehead, the torso, and the hips.

Narrow the waist. Big, but in good proportion,

the buttocks, the arms, and the thighs.

Fine the eyebrows, the fingers, and the lips."

It's quite some checklist. Now, nobody actually looked like this,

but you could help nature by, for example, plucking your eyebrows

or plucking the hair out of the front of your head.

So a lot of Botticelli's women have very, very high foreheads,

because perhaps the models made that forehead higher

by plucking or shaving the hair from the top of their head.

You can't change nature by stretching your own proportions,

but you can do it in a work of art.

So somebody looking at this would see an ideal woman.

She is almost improving on nature.

So, in many respects, that's quite a modern thing to do.

The face of Venus in this iconic painting

may not be entirely imagined.

Many believed she was modelled after Simonetta Vespucci,

a renowned Florentine noble celebrated in her time

as the most beautiful woman in the city.

Though she died young,

her image seems to live on in Botticelli's work.

Decades later, when Botticelli died,

he was buried near her in Florence's Church of Ognissanti,

leading to the long-held belief that he had asked to rest forever

beside the woman who may have inspired his greatest masterpiece.

The pastel-like colours of this painting

are really, really crucial to understanding the painting.

And this is really important, because if we look at Botticelli's

earlier works and his later works, they are completely different.

The reason for this is because when Botticelli

is painting a religious painting, as far as he's concerned, it's history.

He's painting a history painting and he's showing realism.

This painting is not about realism

and so he doesn't use realistic tones,

he uses these beautiful pastel tones,

which is what really distinguishes it

from other paintings of this period.

So the colours that we see in the painting might seem quite pale.

We have to bear in mind that there has been some change

to the intensity of the colours over the years

due to exposure to the light.

And so, for example, the blue of the sea

would have been a lot more intense and vivid.

And there would have been a sense almost of reflection

because of the use of gold leaf. Now, you have to almost squint

when you're in front of the painting these days to see the use of gold,

but there's a lot of gold in the painting.

There's a lot of gold in the hair of Venus.

The entire shell is tinged with this edge of gold.

All of the flowers have these little details of gold

in the stems and so forth.

And in the wings of Zephyr on the left-hand side and Cloris,

there are also gold details.

And if we look at the central figure herself,

she is painted in this alabaster colour.

She has an outline, she doesn't blend in naturally.

There's no naturalism about this painting.

He wanted us to understand that this is otherworldly,

and so he uses otherworldly colours.

Now, Botticelli trained as a goldsmith.

By the time we get to the 1480s, 1490s, when he's at his height,

the use of gold is seen as a little bit anachronistic,

a little bit old-fashioned, but Botticelli doesn't care about that,

he loves the decorative effects of gold.

So when we're coming back to this question of the colours,

they're quite decorative colours.

They're almost like the colours you might find in a tapestry

or a fresco, a decorative fresco or tapestry.

There's the element to this painting that it is decorative,

and the colours and the composition aid that.

Before Botticelli even picked up the brush...

The Birth Of Venus began with careful planning.

Sketched out as an underdrawing on canvas,

then layered with a smooth ground to prepare the surface.

I think it's a technical masterpiece.

There's no blending in this painting at all,

because it's made with egg tempera,

so it's a completely different technique.

But unlike many Renaissance artists

who built their scenes with dramatic shadows and perspective,

Botticelli chose a different path.

His figures are softly lit with only minimal shading,

giving them a flat, almost weightless presence.

Oil painting hadn't really come into its own at this point,

so people were painting with tempera.

And what's super interesting about tempera

is that it does keep its colours,

and it keeps its colours because the egg binds it.

The egg dries and binds it. It's made with egg and water and pigment.

And once that egg dries, it keeps it tight.

And so it's almost like a fresco.

The colours seep in and are held forever.

When you look up close, you see it's all about crosshatching,

it's not actually about blending paint. And technically,

that was a difficult thing to do.

So I think in that sense Botticelli is a genius.

That crosshatching was no accident.

It's part of a carefully balanced composition,

where every element is placed with precision.

Venus stands perfectly centred, framed by the winds on one side

and the welcoming figure on the other...

...with a strong horizontal flow

that guides the viewer's eyes from left to right.

Even the curves of the shoreline

and the folds of the drapery echo one another,

creating a rhythm across the canvas.

It perfectly depicts the moment from ancient mythology

when Venus, the goddess of love and beauty,

emerges fully formed from the sea foam.

In the original story, she is carried ashore on a scallop shell,

welcomed by the gentle winds and nymphs who celebrate her arrival.

During the Renaissance, people were rediscovering and embracing

the texts of classical antiquity.

This renewed interest in ancient literature, philosophy and art

inspired artists and thinkers to look back to the myths,

not just as stories, but as sources of wisdom.

I think we have to consider the painting against the background

of a movement in the 15th century known as Humanism.

And that is a rediscovery of interest in subjects,

such as poetry and rhetoric,

that's speech making and grammar and so forth.

People are starting to have a greater knowledge

of classical stories and classical mythology.

Authors such as Homer or Hesiod,

their accounts, their poems and their literature

was being... reborn, you might say,

and published and becoming quite familiar in the 15th century.

The artists and the patrons are showing their awareness

and their knowledge of classical mythology,

but also their knowledge and awareness

of classical visual sources as well.

So, for example, in the centre, the image of Venus

is based on a famous classical sculpture called the Venus Pudica.

And, actually, there was a version of that classical sculpture

in the Medici collection. We're not entirely sure

whether it was in the Medici collection

as early as the 15th century, but if it was, it's certainly something

that Botticelli himself could be using as inspiration

for the image of Venus in this painting.

While it appears at first to be purely mythological,

Botticelli weaves classical mythology

with subtle threads of Christian symbolism, creating an image

that reflects both pagan beauty and spiritual purity.

I don't think it's purely mythological.

I think there are Christian references in this,

and I think it's a way of incorporating Christian references

into art about pagan subject matter.

I think this references lots of other Christian paintings,

for example, The Baptism Of Christ.

And if you look at a lot of images of the Madonna,

the religious images of the Madonna, she quite often has this conch shell

next to her because it's a symbol of baptism as well.

So there are lots and lots of Christian references,

and I think that's how he made it palatable.

Venus is more than a goddess.

She is an icon of love, feminine grace,

and the Renaissance view of perfection.

It is a painting that speaks across time,

merging poetry, philosophy and faith into a single universal image.

Few works are as beautiful or as lasting as The Birth Of Venus.

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