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
Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Botticelli) The Madonna and Child with Two Angels is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, dating to c. 1468-1469. It is now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, in Naples. The work was once attributed to Filippino Lippi, master of Botticelli. The composition essentially derives from Botticelli's master (and Filippino Lippi's father) Filippo Lippi. The faces and other details suggest around the same period of the "Fortitude" and the other juvenile Madonnas of the Italian painter. The composition is similar to Verrocchio's "Madonna of the Milk", probably dating to a year