The Birth of Venus

Botticelli’s iconic mythological scene shows the goddess Venus standing nude on a giant shell as the wind carries her toward shore. On the left, the wind god Zephyrus blows her across the sea, while a female figure on the right waits to greet her with a cloak. Its graceful countours and luminous surface helped make it one of the best-known images of the Italian Renaissance.

Likely commissioned in the mid-1480s for a Medici patron, the painting was later recorded at the Villa di Castello, where the Medici owned it for centuries. It was transferred to the Uffizi Galleries in Florence in 1815, where it has remained since.