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 source of information about his life, even though Vasari twice mixes him up with Francesco Botticini, another Florentine painter of the day. Vasari saw Botticelli as a firm partisan of the anti-Medici faction influenced by Savonarola, while Vasari himself relied heavily on the patronage of the returned Medicis of his own day. Vasari also saw him as an artist who had abandoned his talent in his last years, which offended his high idea of the artistic vocation. He devotes a good part of his text to rather alarming anecdotes of practical jokes by Botticelli. In 1621 a picture-buying agent of