The Birth of Venus

I went to the Uffizi gallery in Florence, there I saw the very famous painting The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. It’s tempera on canvas and measures 67 x 109 inches. It is a depiction of the birth of Venus, she is in the middle of the painting on top of a shell. It is a painting, but there are a lot of contour lines around the subjects, this was before they developed a very smooth transition between light and dark. It looks very outlined especially in the smaller areas like the toes and hair. The colors are not very vibrant, they have more of a pastel look, the cool colors are not very sharp and the warms are just that. There were also little bits of gold leaf used in the trees, around the shell and in the wings of the angels on the right. Botticelli used value to show the direction of the wind by making parts of the hair and robes darker according to where the wind is blowing. He made the ripples of the robes by using value again from going from dark to light according to how it folds. But the water doesn't have that kind of dimension, the water looks very flat and the ripples are just little strips of white that are supposed to the ripples in the water. The painting was a lot bigger than I thought, i had seen it in books before. In class we learned to use light on to show light, Botticelli did this in the water and highlights of the hair, in the right side of the trees where the light was shinning through. I liked that i was able to see the brush strokes and the lines he used to make it, its one thing seeing it on a paper but when you get to walk up to it, its really nice to be able to see its “skeleton”.