The Birth of Venus (Gérôme)

Jean-Léon Gérôme was an exponent of academism, the nineteenth-century French art based on the academies of Fine Arts. During his life he was greatly inspired by Greco-Roman mythology and also specialized in the female artistic nude. The work depicts the birth of Venus, the goddess of love in Roman mythology. The goddess emerges from the sea, on a small wave, surrounded by dozens of putti, one of which holds a golden apple in one hand that recalls the apple of contention, which in the myth of the judgment of Paris was given to the goddess of love. Unlike many other works on the same artistic theme, which actually depict the arrival of the goddess on the island of Cyprus, this painting portrays the moment of the birth of the goddess. In the background an island stands out on the horizon.^[4]