Reclaiming Venus: How We Misunderstand Beauty
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1484-1485, tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm
When it comes to Renaissance art (1400-1600), there is hardly a painting as recognizable as Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. We see it everywhere. It stands right there, at the heart of the Western canon, hanging proudly at the Uffizi. It finds its way into the imagination, inspiring silk-screen printed works by Andy Warhol, contemporary canvases by Yin Xin, and glossy covers of the New Yorker. The figure of Venus is invited everywhere, urging reinterpretations in movies like Malèna and videos like Lady Gaga’s “Applause.” But why, you might ask.
It is a matter of beauty.
Andy Warhol, Birth of Venus, 1984, screenprint, 81.3 x 111.8 cm
We, as a society, are obsessed with beauty, even at an age when we do not admit to it. We seem to have gone a long way from the Renaissance, where the perfect woman had long golden hair, deep brown eyes, and a high, pale forehead. Nowadays we claim to accept imperfection. In the art world, the bodily disfigurations of Lucian Freud have pushed the Renaissance ideal out of the picture, placing something entirely different within the frame: imperfection. The work of Jenny Saville has continued that practice, trading fleshy, imperfect bodies for millions of dollars, all at auction. Even fashion houses like Calvin Klein have hopped onto the trend and exchanged their god-like models for mere mortals.
While one might expect this to shatter our fascination with Venus, it has only magnified it. We are attracted to her, physically and philosophically. Just as the Renaissance painters Botticelli, Titian, and Lotto, we understand her spirit exceeds the physical and enters the philosophical. Because, at her core, Venus symbolizes human beauty, inside and out.
But back to art. We do Renaissance art a disservice when we only consider the aesthetic. As far as art movements go, Renaissance art is as philosophical as Surrealist art is psychological. No discussion of fifteenth-century art–and its conception of beauty–is fair without consideration of the movement’s philosophical ideals about appearances. These ideals not only explain what makes Botticelli’s Venus beautiful but also justify her appeal today, even in an era skeptical of perfection.
On Botticelli’s canvas, just as on those of his contemporaries, beauty becomes more than an external state; it signals internal perfection. According to Neo-Platonism, the philosophy that drove Renaissance artists like Botticelli and Michelangelo, external perfection was reserved for those who possessed nobler, spiritual qualities: grace, strength, and love. To them, beauty expressed virtue.
Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, marble, 517 x 199 cm
It is because of this that Michelangelo idealized David’s body, using his fleshy perfection to symbolize the strength, courage, and patriotism he displayed in triumphing over Goliath and “protecting” his people. The implication was that David, as a symbol of Florence, protected its citizens from oppressive rulers (like the Medici). It is due to the same reason that Michelangelo’s Pietà depicts Mary seemingly untouched by human struggles and unburdened by earthly loads like the body of her dead son. Michelangelo keeps her youthful, beautiful, and serene in order to convey her trust in God and His will. As for The Birth of Venus, the goddess’ beauty not only symbolises her virtues—specifically her role in inspiring artists, lovers, and women alike—but becomes a virtue in itself.
Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498, marble, 174 x 195 cm
Thus, to the Renaissance artist and viewer, beauty was never just external. It was a prelude to the intrinsically and intangibly beautiful, to qualities and virtues that transcend the etchings of the flesh. It was also the starting point of the spectator’s meditation. In gazing at an artwork, the viewer’s attention would first linger on the beauty of the figure before voyaging into a broader appreciation of divine beauty and its role in everyday life. For Renaissance viewers, such a meditation was a way to ennoble the soul, to lift it beyond the tangible realities of life and glimpse into the divine. Even more remarkably, meditating on beauty was seen as a way to beautify the self and its fruits. (Pregnant women, for example, were encouraged to contemplate aesthetically striking pictures so that their children would be born beautiful.) Depictions of Renaissance beauty don’t merely address the physical; they tackle the personal, spiritual, and divine.
Where does this leave us today, over 500 years since the dawn of the Renaissance?
Although we may have shattered the illusion that internal beauty could only be expressed through external perfection, we have become way too obsessed with the body. It is a wonderful thing we are accepting of all shapes and sizes; but, in our battle to welcome everyone into the frame, we have allowed the external to possess our attention for far too long. We are neglecting internal values and the spiritual. Perhaps a return to beauty, or the appreciation of it, is a way to amend that.
Furthermore, in declaring it unfair to focus on bodies, or worse, to judge them, we have inadvertently dismissed the contemplation of the highest within us: the Neo-Platonic ideal that external beauty was a result of internal beauty.
Ultimately, these depictions are not concerned with the body but with the spirit. Perhaps we should continue to shed light on imperfections and flaws, as Freud, Bacon, and Seville have done. But at the same time, we should not forget that the idealization of the human body, at least as far as the canon is concerned, represents the purest expression of the highest moral standards within each of us. It is not simply a matter of beauty standards but of moral and philosophical beliefs. Instead of denouncing beauty in its conventional sense, we should see and appreciate it for what it actually is–the human attempt to reach the divine, the extension of Adam’s finger towards God.
And so, to return to the initial question: why does Venus find her way into everything? Because we intuitively recognize our need for her. We sense and experience the necessity of beauty as deeply—though not always as consciously—as our Renaissance predecessors did. In a world that often prioritizes the flawed, the imperfect, and the transient, we still long for external and internal beauty in our daily experiences, knowing it sheds a beacon of light otherwise absent. Perhaps this is what the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky imagined when he wrote, “Beauty will save the world.” Because it will, one looker at a time.