The Birth of Venus to Botticelli's Florentine contemporary, and Lorenzo di Medici's court poet, Angelo Poliziano. The iconography of "The Birth of Venus" is similar to a description of a relief of the event in Poliziano's poem the "Stanze per la giostra", commemorating a Medici joust in 1475, which may also have influenced Botticelli, although there are many differences. For example Poliziano talks of multiple Horae and zephyrs. Older writers, following Horne, posited that "his patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco asked him to paint a subject illustrating the lines", and that remains a possibility, though one difficult to maintain so confidently today. Another poem by
Temptations of Christ (Botticelli) Moses, who transmitted the Law, and the young man may symbolically represent Christ, who, according to the Gospels, was wounded and slain for the benefit of mankind, and healed through the Resurrection so that mankind might also be made spiritually clean, and receive salvation. In Christian symbolism, many stories, such as the healing of the leper, are perceived to prefigure the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, or other events in his life. Temptations of Christ (Botticelli) The Temptations of Christ is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, executed in 1480–1482 and located in the Sistine Chapel, Rome.