The Birth of Venus of Venus" flatter not only the Medici and Botticelli but all of Florence, home to the worthy successors to some of the greatest figures of antiquity, both in governance and in the arts. These essentially pagan readings of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" should not exclude a more purely Christian one, which may be derived from the Neoplatonic reading of the painting indicated above. Viewed from a religious standpoint, the nudity of Venus suggests that of Eve before the Fall as well as the pure love of Paradise. Once landed, the goddess of love will don the earthly garb of mortal
Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Botticelli, Munich) he started in fact to abandon the allegoric inspiration that had made him a favourite of the Medici court in favour of more intimate and painstaking religious reflection. Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Botticelli, Munich) The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, is a painting of the common subject of the Lamentation of Christ by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, finished around 1490-1492. It is now in the Alte Pinakothek, in Munich. The portrait shows the inert body of Christ surrounded by the Virgin, St. Peter, and Mary Magdalene, St. John the Evangelist, St. Jerome and St. Paul. The pathetic