1516
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
The Birth of Venus is a 1516 by Marco Dente, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see Venus standing on a seashell, her long hair barely covering her body, while a woman on shore holds out a cloak. This isn’t an original idea—it’s a print of a lost painting by Raphael. The artist, Marco Dente, copied Raphael’s design so well that prints like this helped spread his style across Europe. Even the church used these slightly risqué images in private bathrooms. Look up *sfumato* to see how Raphael softened edges like this.
Marco Dente was one of several printmakers who re-created Raphael’s designs as engravings. Both of Dente’s compositions after Raphael relate to the latter’s frescos in the stufetta , or bathroom, of Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena’s apartments in the Vatican Palace. A scholar of classical antiquity and a patron of the arts, the Cardinal personally chose these mildly erotic female nudes, a common subject in bathroom decorations, even for members of the clergy. Depicted here is Venus, the goddess of love and fertility. According to the myth of her birth, she was created in sea foam from…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Marco Dente da Ravenna (1493–1527), usually just called Marco Dente, was an Italian engraver born in Ravenna in the latter part of the 15th Century.
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