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
Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli) Calumny of Apelles (Botticelli) The Calumny of Apelles is a tempera panel painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. Based on the description of an ancient lost painting by Apelles, the work was completed in about 1494–95, and is now in the Uffizi, Florence. The content of Apelles' painting, as described by Lucian, became popular in Renaissance Italy, and Botticelli was neither the first nor last Italian Renaissance artist to depict it. Leon Battista Alberti had praised it and recommended it as a subject for artists to recreate in his highly influential "De pictura" of 1435, and there were