Renaissance

The Birth of Venus

 Sandro Botticelli,  or Alessandro diMariano di Vanni Filipepi, was a very talented and distinct artist that actually become popular in the renaissance period. Born in Italy, Botticelli worked as a goldsmith. Most renaissance painters started their apprenticeships at the age of twelve or  fourteen. Sandro's career as a painter started at the relatively late age of about eighteen when Botticelli was sent to the great painter, Fra Filippo where he learned how to mix colours and clean brushes. Botticelli was greatly influenced by his teacher which encouraged him to go into art. At the age of 25, Botticelli completed one of the first paintings that he was actually paid for, a panel that would reside in a meeting room frequented by the most important men in Florence, Italy; the painting was called Fortitude. He became Florence's favourite artist and everyone loved his paintings. He had no one equal to his talent for mixing colours. He was in fact, one of the greatest colourists of all time. He was also a master of the rhythmic line, using paintbrush to outline the figures in his paintings. In doing so, he used his paintbrush in the way we would use a pencil or a pen and he believed that these lines added a feeling of fluidity and movement. Botticelli made a lot of money, up to 100 florins per picture and in our modern money, one florin is about a few hundred dollars. Botticelli did not only paint for himself, he enjoyed painting religious pictures for churches where he also helped paint the Sistine Chapel by painting three frescos (a painting done rapidly in colour on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling so that the colours penetrate the plaster and become fixed). Botticelli was famous for many paintings including his most famous one "The Birth of Venus" which is the photo above. He painted The Adoration of the Magi, The Judith, Primavera, Madonna the Magnificent and the masterly group of the Virgin Enthroned. He also painted the beautiful Mars and Venus too. Botticelli's paintings ignored realism and loved to allegorize, which means to interpret or represent symbolically. Botticelli also enjoyed his artwork to be nude. Unlike most painters, Botticelli had no use for perspective. He placed his own focus on that special kind of beauty seen through imagination; it was the beauty of fantasy and his work at times seemed sort of flat. His portayals were sometimes not seemed quite as realistic but he was a master, and his paintings were outstandingly beautiful.

  

Botticelli actually did a lot for the renaissance art. His work was so amazing that people actually started to copy it. Now, it is extremely hard to tell which ones are his masterpieces. Because Botticelli loved painting fantasy things and loved using his imagination to create beauty, some of the things that people started to copy were mythical beings and classical beauty. People especially copy his technique of outlining pictures but back when Botticelli was still alive, his linear style was out of date by the time he died but was revived in the second half of the 19th century, when his female figures were a major influence on the Pre- Raphaelites and his flowing line was an inspiration for Art Nouveau. For the men of the renaissance era, the mythology of the Greek's and Roamns represented a superior form of truth and wisdom and while Botticelli carried out the artwork, the story behind the painting would have been seen as a symbol of mystery and Botticelli depicted this in the best way possible in his painting The Birth of Venus; it reflects Humanism. Humanism was a huge part of renaissance and had a huge impact on it. Focusing on his "Birth of Venus" painting, Venus was the Roman Goddess of love. Way back when, even before the renaissance period, people had no concept of individuality, and there was no focus on mankind, only on God. Everything was considered to be a mystery that only God could understand. People had no  science or any understanding of the world back then. During the renaissance, this all changed. Humanism placed a value on humanity. Some of the best examples of humanism can be found in Shakespeares and Leonardo da Vinci's work. Some characteristics of humanism include an interest in Greek and Roman myth/art/culture focus on the worldly life, and a focus on human potential and achievement while staying away from the spiritual and eternal life. The Birth of Venus represents these ideas in several ways. The subject is a Roman myth and completely secular. Botticelli chose to portray Venus in a highly realistic way, focusing on a realistic human form. He concentrated on a way to perfect the worldly life rather than on the preparation for an eternal life. If you compare this to Medieval art, which had no concept of realism, it is a big difference. Even today, humanism is still around in artwork, not just paintings but also in novels, drawings, songs and even our daily lives.

Venus

The Birth of Venus, which is the painting I used for my assignment, was considered to be so beautiful that you would not even notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the strange way her left arm is hinged to the body. This goes to show how Botticelli took something that would not be considered "beautiful" and turned it into something that seems natural and truly beautiful without the intent to be beautiful. When I typed in Botticelli's name into the Google search this painting was one of the first to come up and it caught my eye instantly and dragged my attention towards it. I loved it so much but I didn't even know why. After looking at different paintings and renaissance artists I just couldn't find another work of art that I liked more that Botticelli's Venus and I didn't know why. I guess i love the naturalness of her, the beauty of her naturalness. It's like she feels comfortable being nude and is proud to be the way she is. The length of her hair and the hairstyle Botticelli gave her really attracts me to the photo because it is an excessive length of hair to have (better seen in the first photo) which is unnatural but still beautiful. I really love everything about this photo and love how Botticelli painted her. His artwork is truly amazing.

Ellus

After I knew this was the photo I was going to do for my assignment, I had to go take photos of Ellie and try to get the proper lighting that was on the original masterpiece. I had to move lights around, turn lights on and off, change my settings around until I got a photograph with just the right amount of light on the left and right side of her face, making the left side significantly darker. It was a really big challenge trying to Photoshop Ellie’s face onto her’s because of the big difference between that skin colours and the way it was painted. Because the texture of the photo seems rough and had lines on it, it was hard to match the texture of the photo of Ellie I took, with Venus. To match the skin colours and to combine them but the hardest challenge I had in created my renaissance photo. I had to bring up the brightness, play around with the colours a little, paint on her face here and there and add noise to Ellie's face. Once I matched up the skin tone and gave Ellie's face the same lines and texture her left eye was so dark and had so much going on that it wasn't even noticeable anymore and did not even look like an eye. I had to take her eye and make only the eye brighter and with less lines on it so you could actually see that she has a second eye. Although the process was long and frustrating,  after three days, I finally got a satisfying result without wrecking the beauty of the original photo.