The graceful figure of Venus poised in her shell, as depicted by Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, is so synonymous with beauty that even those unfamiliar with art can recognize her, such is her fame. What is less well-known are his paintings of the Madonna that share similar qualities of classical beauty. Throughout the Renaissance, artists referenced the ancient classics. Art historian E.H. Gombrich writes in his book “The Story of Art” that people were “so convinced of the superior wisdom of the ancients that they believed these classical legends must contain some profound and mysterious truth.” In “The Birth of Venus,” Alessandro Filipepi, commonly known as Botticelli (circa 1445–1510), based Venus on the ancient statue Aphrodite of Knidos (Venus to Italians) by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles. In Botticelli’s time, such earthly beauty was equated with the divine. “Over the course of the 15th century, beauty rapidly became an important feature of …