How to encapsulate love? With Boucheron and its arrows of diamonds, alongside sumptuous birds and their soft plumage. Also with Sandro Botticelli, the famous Italian painter who created the iconic “The birth of Venus”.
For a thousand years, nothing like this had ever been seen in Europe. Prior to this painting, it was only the sinful Eve – the incarnation of lust and sin – who was presented undressed in an artwork, before she was driven out of Paradise, bowed in shame. Here, we see the goodness of love accompanied by a shower of flowers – Botticelli’s interpretation of the birth of Venus. According to the Greek poet Anachréon (580-495 BC), a bush of roses would have sprung from the earth when she set foot upon the shore for the first time, on the island of Cythera, after being born of the foam.
In “Theogony”, written in the 8th century BC, Hesiod also spoke of Anadyomene Aphrodite, meaning “out of the water”. During the battle of the gods, Chronos overthrew and emasculated his father Ouranos, the sky. When the seed of the latter spread in the waves, the goddess of love was born from the foam of the sea, fertilised by the sky. This is why the sumptuous Venus is often painted alongside the sea.