SHAPING BEAUTY WITHHUMANISM
Mitchell 1
5-2 Final Project Milestone Two:
Identifying Themes in Literature and Art: Shaping Beauty with Humanism
Sara Mitchell
Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester NH
Prof. Hannah Judson
FAS 201 x0000
March 30, 2022
SHAPING BEAUTY WITH HUMANISM
Mitchell 2
Stanze di messere Hngelo Poliziano cominciate perlagiostra di Giuliano deMedici
Loescher-Chiantore-Torino
Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, Early Renaissance, Uffizi Gallery Florence, Italy, 1484-1486
Stanze per la Giostra, Angelo Poliziano, Early Renaissance, Italy, 1478
Identifying Themes in Literature and Art: Shaping Beauty with Humanism
The purpose of this paper will be to identify and compare two works of art produced by
Sandro Botticelli and Angelo Poliziano and show how they emphasize the themes of beauty and
humanism in their presentation. The Renaissance era is known for its artistic and literary works
that take humanism and beauty to heart. The visual work of art by Sandro Botticelli is
titled Birth of Venus. Botticelli's Birth of Venus was said to have been produced between 1485
and 1486 during the early Renaissance period, depicting the goddess of romance and beauty in
her nude state riding on a seashell. At this time, such imagery did not exist and was the first to
show a nude, female human form. The Birth of Venus is a work of art currently held at the Uffizi
SHAPING BEAUTY WITH HUMANISM
Mitchell 3
Gallery in Florence, Italy, and represents the embodiment of beauty itself when gazing upon it. In
Botticelli's painting, he used tempera on canvas to illustrate the myth of the birth of a woman
who was brought onshore by Zephyrus's winds and welcomed by Primavera, the goddess of
spring. The use of curved line work such as flowing hair and repetition throughout the image
provide motion and movement, as well as a soft color palette, providing a calming ambiance to
the artwork. During Botticelli's time, humanism was prevalent, and pagan sculptures and
narratives influenced the creation of his visual works of art, which he produced for the Medici
family.
Sequentially, a work of literature by the poet Angelo Poliziano composed, Stanze per la
Giostra, written in 1478. his work references the tournament of 1475 and the mythologized
version between two people in the author's lifetime. A romance is depicted between Giuliano,
Lorenzo Medici's younger brother, and Simonetta Cattaneo, the beautiful woman of Florence,
with a mythical twist (Loy, 2019). During the Renaissance, artists strove to create likenesses and
realistic representations of the human body and depicted the freedom of individual expression as
well as an interest in the art of the classical world (MindEdge, 2022). Based on the theme of
humanism and beauty, both works of art portray gods and goddesses of the divine in the form of
human beings. Botticelli immortalized the image of a woman he knew to represent an
embodiment of beauty, transforming her into the form of a divine being within his paintings
(Bimba, 2020). In the literary sense, Poliziano composed a poem that spoke of the romance
between the tw