0144NOTAphrodite

0144NOTAphrodite_Warhol

Ovid Met. 10.519-559
Hesiod Th. 190-199

Andy Warhol. (Adaptation of Botticelli's Birth of Venus in) Details of Renaissance. Painting. Acrylic and Silkscreen on linen. 1984.

A piece from this collection recently sold at auction for approximately $68,000.

This is one of several variations of Botticelli's Birth of Venus Warhol created in his Details of Renaissance series. This series was intended to give pop-art overtones to many Renaissance-era works of art. Like his pop-art portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol focused on Venus's face, rather than her voluptuous body. By treating their portraits in a similar manner, Warhol was equating the two figures. Just as Monroe was the quintessential sex-symbol in her era, so Botticelli's Venus was in hers.

Slide by CB.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.