Venus

Garrett Lambur
One of the paintings that struck me quite a lot while we were on this trip was The Birth of Venus by Boticelli. When I first came into the room where it was being displayed there was a big tour group sitting around it while the guide was giving his/her speech through the wireless headsets (whoever came up with that by the way is genius and rich now). It took me aback at first; I was not really quite sure what I thought of it. I had seen pictures of it before but pictures can never do justice of the real painting right in front of you. With the actual painting there you can see brush strokes, the medium used and you feel more of an impact from it. The more I paid attention to it the more I became engrossed with the expression on Venus’s face. There was just something that I could not place about it in my head and even now I still can’t place it. She seems so innocent which fits the story of her having just been born out of the water but at the same time she does not seem innocent. There is almost an underlying feeling of I know my own importance and what is going on, I may be recently born but I am not totally innocent. But what adds to the expression is her striking plain beauty in the picture, she looks as if she is attempting to cover herself but does not do so completely. Perhaps she is trying to draw the eye towards her beauty, she is almost stating I’m beautiful and I know it. While to add to this, she is about to be covered up she doesn’t seem ashamed of herself being shown. All of this adds together to make the picture almost entrancing to the viewer and makes it hard to look away or move to another painting.