There are Venuses and then there are Venuses. Botticelli painted both. The Venus we all know through endless reproduction is the Venus born on the wave and blown to the shore on a clam shell paddleboard. She is nude but shy. Ineffectually so. One hand covers one breast, never mind about the other. Her waterfall of hair is swept into a covering for what remains to be covered. Her gaze is vague, her presence vapid.
The Uffizi can keep its calendar Venus — ours is better, sexier, tricksier. The Venus of the National Gallery’s Venus and Mars (c 1485) is an enigma. If the Venus in The Birth of Venus (c 1484-86) gives everything away, the Venus of Venus and Mars determinedly does not bare