The Birth of Venus sources and interpretations. Many art historians who specialize in the Italian Renaissance have found Neoplatonic interpretations, of which two different versions have been articulated by Edgar Wind and Ernst Gombrich, to be the key to understanding the painting. Botticelli represented the Neoplatonic idea of divine love in the form of a nude Venus. For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of
Punishment of the Sons of Corah sink into it. The children of Korah are spared the fate of their father. The intended message of the painting is clear, no one should doubt the authority of the Pope over the Church. The power of the papacy was constantly being questioned at the time. Punishment of the Sons of Corah The Punishment of the Sons of Corah or Punishment of the Rebels is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, executed in 1480–1482 in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. On 27 October 1480 Botticelli, together with other Florentine painters, left for Rome, where he had been called