Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman, also known as Giovanna degli Albizzi Receiving a Gift of Flowers from Venus (), is a fresco painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli of circa 1483-1486. The painting and its companion piece, "A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts", originally decorated the walls of Villa Lemmi, a country villa near Florence owned by Giovanni Tornabuoni, uncle of Lorenzo de' Medici and head of the Roman branch of the Medici Bank. They were probably
Sandro Botticelli for Botticelli. According to Vasari, Botticelli became a follower of the deeply moralistic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in 1498: Botticelli was a follower of Savonarola's, and this was why he gave up painting and then fell into considerable distress as he had no other source of income. None the less, he remained an obstinate member of the sect, becoming one of the "piagnoni", the snivellers, as they were called then, and abandoning his work; so finally, as an old man, he found himself so poor that if Lorenzo de' Medici ...