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
The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli) The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli) The Tragedy of Lucretia is a tempera and oil painting on a wood "cassone" or "spalliera" panel by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, painted between 1496 and 1504. Known less formally as the Botticelli Lucretia, it is housed in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, having been owned by Isabella Stewart Gardner in her lifetime. The picture is a syncretion of scenes from different legendary themes in different time periods that Botticelli considered related. The topic is revolt against tyranny, a popular one in the volatile Italian republics. The main scene is