Details of a Renaissance Painting (Sandro Botticelli Birth of Venus, 1482)

Andy Warhol’s “Birth of Venus (After Botticelli)” was executed in 1984 as a part of his “Details of Renaissance Paintings” series which reinterprets Renaissance masterpieces by a variety of artists. This blue version of “Birth of Venus” is one of four large-scale images of Sandro Boticelli’s iconic depiction of the goddess Venus.

Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus” (1485 ca.) was commissioned by a member of the Medici family and it quickly became a beloved and culturally ubiquitous image of the goddess emerging from the sea. Warhol cropped the source image and flattened the color background by exclusively using his signature neon color palette. Contrasting the realism of Boticelli’s painting, Warhol subverted art historical traditions, transforming Venus into a pop commodity that is released from her original context and made into a democratized and universalized “Marilyn” for the modern world.