It was the subject of a now-lost painting described by a famous naturalist and by a rhetorician. Many artists, including a great Venetian and a 20th-century Spaniard have been inspired by those descriptions, but the most famous version was produced by someone whose name in translation refers to a small container. What is this oft-repeated subject, considered particularly appropriate for a certain type of garden ornament?

TabbyTom

Aphrodite Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Waves or the Birth of Venus). Pliny, in his Natural History, mentions a painting by Apelles on the subject. There is a painting of the subject by Titian, which is now in the National Gallery of Scotland (God knows how we Brits manage to get hold of things like this these days: maybe our trendsetters are so obsessed with the Impressionists that they’ve forgotten all about Titian, and so the prices are not utterly ridiculous). Picasso used the traditional figure as the central figure in his “Demoiselles d’Avignon.” But the most famous treatment must be by Botticelli, whose name means “little barrel”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Anadyomene Nov 25 06, 5:53 PM

lanfranco

An elegant answer, TT, so the silver mace goes to you. Lucian, too, described the Apelles work, and Botticelli seems to have worked from that description. There is a fine fountain sculpture of the same subject by Giovanni da Bologna at the Medici Villa Petraia, formerly Villa Castello. As for Titian: I promise that the next time someone tries to sell a Titian out of the U.K., the outcry will be heard all the way to John o' Groats. Nov 25 06, 6:14 PM