Venus on the Half-Shell assumed that Vonnegut wrote the book. This problem was solved by the book being reprinted under Farmer's by-line. A common element to this novel is the origin of many of the characters' and locations' names. Farmer "put in a lot of references to literature and fictional authors... Most of the alien names in Venus were formed by transposing the letters of English or non-English words." The title and paperback cover art are a reference to an Italian Renaissance tempera painting by Sandro Botticelli, "The Birth of Venus", which depicts the birth of the goddess Venus as her rising from the
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder resembles this. He is also sometimes claimed to be the subject of other Botticelli portraits, with completely different features (e.g. Pitti Palace, wearing a chaperon). The appearance at auction in 1982, from the Thomas Merton collection, of a rarely seen painting by Botticelli of a young man identified (with no real evidence) as Giovanni il Popolano in a similar pose, holding up a round medallion cut from a much older painting (albeit of a bearded saint, not Cosimo), has led to speculation that this might be a companion piece, and thus that the young man in this portrait is possibly