Pentagonal Venus: the φ (phi) in Αφροδίτη (Aphrodite)

A detail of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus (1485), the Uffizi.  Geometry (G): 2023, DS.

"For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly. A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love."

- Via the Wiki entry for Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

"The patron who commissioned the Botticelli painting for his country villa was a member of the rich and powerful family of the Medici. Either he himself, or one of his learned friends, probably explained to the painter what was known of the way the ancients had represented Venus rising from the sea. To these scholars the story of her birth was the symbol of mystery through which the divine message of beauty came into the world. One can imagine that the painter set to work reverently to represent this myth in a worthy manner. The action of the picture is quickly understood. Venus has emerged from the sea on a shell which is driven to the shore by flying wind-gods amidst a shower of roses.

...Botticelli's Venus is so beautiful that we do not notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the queer way her left arm is hinged to the body. Or, rather, we should say that these liberties which Botticelli took with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline add to the beauty and harmony of the design because they enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and delicate being, wafted to our shores as a gift from Heaven.

 ...Gold is used throughout the painting, accentuating its role as a precious object and echoing the divine status of Venus. Each dark green leaf has a gold spine and outline, and the tree trunks are highlighted with short diagonal lines of gold."

- Excerpts from an 1996 online article regarding Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The article also mentions that the centers of all the roses flying in the sky are also gilded. The head of Venus (inset right, above) is found in the Wiki article. Yes, there's real gold in her hair and skin, too.

Her lovely face is almost a necessary detail to include with the full image because, in the reduced full mages online, her sweet, pensive expression is wholly lost. Botticelli's Venus is an unusual depiction of the goddess. Obviously, she's a young woman, but she is strangely wistful and somehow genderless. If you took away the volumes of strawberry blonde hair and the plucked eyebrows, she could easily be a young man or boy. (I also discuss her here.

 ***

As it turned out (pun intended), the first golden spiral painting I posted on this blog - and what became, more or less, an introduction to the Phi series - was Sandro Botticelli's Cestello Annunciation. At the time, although completely in awe of his two "nested" golden spirals, I was not yet sure what to make of them. Were they simply artifacts of an overall algorithmic spiral design or were they intentional?

Oddly enough, at that time, after doing a quick analysis of a number of Botticelli's paintings, I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to know for certain of the Italian painter's knowledge of the golden ratio; he used a lot spirals of varying descriptions! Although I gave his iconic Venus several glances, I didn't detect the spiral I was looking for... possibly being distracted by that pair of overly large, winged Winds (one of whom may be Zephyrus) hovering in (what appears to be) the foreground (left).

And, then - just this past week - I happened to note the strangely triangular shape of Venus's upper body in the image... specifically accented by her abnormally sloping shoulder. This shoulder, incidentally, has been noted by critics in the past and is considered a (enigmatic) flaw.

But, could there be another explanation, I wondered?

And, then, I found the golden triangle... and it's accompanying pentagonal artifact: the golden spiral... a beautiful spiral, indeed! But, it's optimum placement entailed one teensy, weensy tweak: the triangle needed to be rotated (to the left) by 1 degree. Such a small matter, one might surmise; the slightest skew... and, yet, it's influence lends to the overall preternatural ambience, tension (and, imbalance) of the image. Without it, Venus would not mystify us... her scallop shell "boat" would not sail so seamlessly into our dreams...

(Continued... October 27th.)

But, not necessarily.  As it happened, I was a little unhappy with my first discovery, realizing that Venus should be entirely housed within the triangle, instead of the shorter triangle I initially gave her. So, I came up with the larger triangle (above) last night, and found it was unnecessary to rotate the triangle at all. Instead, it was more necessary to locate the larger triangle (and spiral) I intuited was present. See below.

As is evident, however, the present dimensions of the canvas do not entirely support the spiral. But, we've seen this before and my opinion is the same. I stand by these spirals more than I do the dimensions of canvases painted during a period known for severe cropping.

In any case, there's no denying the movement the spiral brings to a painting. And, once again, the strange postures of Botticelli's characters (all of them, but, especially Venus) are explained... in the same way Mary's posture (and Gabriel's) were explained by the golden spiral in the Cestello Annunciation.

 

But, all in all, Botticelli envisioned an unusually chaste, Madonna-like Venus. And, this isn't unusual; Aphrodite and the Christian figure of Mary share a certain mythology. Unlike the Madonna, however, and even within her invisible triangle, Venus Aphrodite is a more fragile entity... too vulnerable for this world. At the same time, she is singular. She is a monad - a true divinity - she belongs to no one... and, therefore, everyone. She is an icon for love, but she has never really resided on the physical plane. She is gold. But, especially in the eyes of medieval artists and those who came after, this gold is, was, and always will be, hermetic, discrete, and sub rosa.

As it stands, this post is, more or less an introduction to a cycle of phi-related material and its unusual relationship to Venus Aphrodite, the unhyphenated name of what seems to be an almost pentagonal construct. I can supply a lot of diverse evidence for this, and will in a few up-coming posts (when and if possible). But, for now, I'd like to leave you with this: a surprising - or, rather, not surprising - image by a Dutch artist. It is an etching from the 1500-1600s and is a depiction of Venus and Cupid (and & dove) in the heavens (inset left). It was found along with a number of similar Dutch Venus etchings at the wonderful Rijks Museum site, my new favorite place!

Below are the GTSs I found. No, the artist didn't use all three spirals; only one was needed. The others are the inevitable artifacts which are generated in a GTS design. Click on to enlarge.

Source: Rijks Museum. Geometry: DS 2023.

Note that the first GTS uses an upright golden triangle, while the "mirrored" spiral set uses triangles which have been skewed by 5 degrees. In a sense, "skewing" the spiral in a work of art is something akin to "squaring a number" in a computational way, but, with a difference. Five is the magic number here, and its movement - which is perpetually kinetic - is dynamical in a work of art... and 5-fold symmetries are tools for acceleration, amplification and articulation in design.

Meanwhile, this article is being added to the Golden Series link page where you will find a few others in the new Venus Aphrodite section waiting for publication.

Once again, while the witching season is still with us... and while I'm not sure I can be here Tuesday, have a great holiday!