Venus in Art: the Goddess, the Mother, and the Whore

By utilizing intersectional theory to examine the presence of women as a gender in art, feminist art theory recognizes the social power of art as both a reflection of society and creation of culture. Developing along with the institutionalization of art during the Baroque and Renaissance eras, artistic renditions of the Roman goddess, Venus, became cultural symbols of femininity. According to these Neoplatonic interpretations of Roman epithets, Venus is typified into three categories: Venus Caelestis, the Venus of divine love, ethereal beauty, and spirituality; Venus Genetrix, the Venus of fertility, marriage, and monogamous sexuality; and Venus Naturalis, the Venus of lust, immoral sexuality, and prostitution. Representations of Venus as a subject in Renaissance art reflect and perpetuate society’s patriarchal values of women, reducing feminine expression to the tropes of the goddess, the mother, and the whore. These conceptualizations of Venus are measured against one another, deemed positive or negative by their subscription to accepted expressions of femininity, and subsequently perpetuate a hierarchical gender system. Such gendered typecasting is evident in the following works: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1482-85), P.P. Rubens’ Venus and Adonis (1630-40), Carracci’s Venus and Anchises (1597-1600), Diego Velasquez’s The Toilet of Venus (1647-51), Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538), and Lucas Cranach’s Cupid Complaining to Venus (1525-27)

Intersectionality in Art

Please click the links below to view more information about each presentation. “Clever on Sunday: A Visual Artist Interpretation of the Post-WWII Persuasion of Consumer Marketing and the Gender Gap” Courtney L. Starrett, Seton Hall University “Feminist Conceptual Art & Pedagogy of the Indexical Present” Carrie Hart, University of North Carolina at Greensboro “Venus in Art: the Goddess, the Mother, and the Whore” Grace E. Rauen, Salem Colleg