The Birth of Venus sea brings forth Venus just as the Virgin gives birth to the ultimate symbol of love, Christ. Rather than choosing one of the many interpretations offered for Botticelli's depiction of the "Birth (Arrival?) of Venus" it might be better to view it from a variety of perspectives. This layered approach—mythological, political, religious—was intended. Botticelli, or more likely his workshop, repeated the figure of Venus in another painting of about 1490. This life-sized work depicts a similar figure and pose, partially clad in a light blouse, and contrasted against a plain dark background. It is in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
Sandro Botticelli by Savonarola, almost all destroyed after his fall. The Medici family were effective rulers of Florence, which was nominally a republic, throughout Botticelli's lifetime up to 1494, when the main branch were expelled. Lorenzo il Magnifico became the head of the family in 1469, just around the time Botticelli started his own workshop. He was a great patron of both the visual and literary arts, and encouraged and financed the humanist and Neoplatonist circle from which much of the character of Botticelli's mythological painting seems to come. In general Lorenzo does not seem to have commissioned much from Botticelli, preferring