Renascence of Venus
by CRANE, Walter, Tempera on canvas, 138 x 184 cm
Walter Crane spent his honeymoon in Italy in 1871. While he was there, he became interested in 15th-century Italian art. For this work, Crane was inspired by Botticelli’s painting Birth of Venus from the 1480s. The compositions are similar. Both show Venus, the Roman goddess of love, emerging from the sea after her birth as a fully-grown woman. Like Botticelli, Crane painted with tempera, a medium made from coloured pigment and egg yolk. At his wife Mary’s request, rather than draw from a female model, Crane used a male model, Alessandro di Marco, for the body of Venus.
Crane’s larger-scale pictures increasingly reveal his belief that art might be used as a metaphor for the human condition. The Renascence of Venus shows both his study of Botticelli and his hope that a new appreciation of beauty in art and decoration was coming about in England.