Botticelli’s "The Birth of Venus" and the Visual Politics of Desirability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This project examines three contemporary re-creations of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, exploring how modern depictions of the same image and story return to and change Botticelli’s vision. I juxtapose the fifteenth-century painting with three contemporary re-creations: Larry Moss’ Birth of Venus in Arigami (2009), Lady Gaga’s Applause music video (2013), and David LaChapelle’s The Rebirth of Venus photograph (2019). Venus has timeless status as an icon of beauty and desirability, but she changes over time in art. The original was created during the eruption of humanistic culture in the Early Renaissance and had radical and controversial influence.[1] The Renaissance saw a rise in ideas about religion, politics, and science, that influenced artists to push the boundaries of representability by seeing the body for visual pleasure.[2] Due to the authority of the church, the nude or partially nude body was subject to censorship, and erasure. Many artworks, including some by Botticelli, were confiscated or destroyed because they were considered obscene.[3] Botticelli’s painting was a private commission as the subject matter was controversial. It hung above the bed of wealthy statesman Lorenzo de’ Medici.[4] Now the original is accessible in public space, as are re-creations of the original, as the politics of representability have changed. Censorship of the female body still exists, but the boundaries of nudity continue to be pushed and moved in art, and in public discourses about art. [1] “Renaissance Nude,” Getty Museum, Getty Publications, https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/renaissance_nude/inner.html. [2] Ibid [3] Ibid [4] (“Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance, Botticelli, PBS” 2023) “Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance., Botticelli,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), https://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/renaissance/botticelli.html
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.022 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".