Mythology in art.docVIP

Mythology as Reflected in Art 1. The Renaissance With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of Greek mythology through subsequent centuries. From the early years of Renaissance, artists portrayed subjects from Greek mythology alongside more conventional Christian themes. Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello (The Little Barrel; March 1, 1445 – May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a golden age, a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting, and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art. The Birth of Venus It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore Pallas and the Centaur The paintings bare landscape focuses ones gaze on the two figures. A centaur has trespassed on forbidden territory. This lusty being, half horse and half man, is being brought under control by a guard-nymph armed with a shield and halberd, and she has grabbed him by the hair. The woman has been identified both as the goddess Pallas Athena and the Amazon Camilla, chaste heroine of Virgils Aeneid. What is undisputed is the moral content of the painting, in which virtue is victorious over sensuality through the use of reason. The two parts of the human soul, reason and instinct fighting one another, are represented by the double nature of the centaur. The latter