0:00:09 > 0:00:12It's just before dawn in Florence,
0:00:12 > 0:00:16and I'm on my way to a private appointment with a goddess.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28Oh, my God. My heart is beating so fast
0:00:28 > 0:00:32because the replicas and the prints just don't do it justice.
0:00:33 > 0:00:36She is so beautiful.
0:00:36 > 0:00:41There is a voluptuousness and a juicy, ripe purity about her.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46And you can almost feel it swaying
0:00:46 > 0:00:49with this gentle kind of heartbeat pulse
0:00:49 > 0:00:53that just produces such pure joy.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57It's like a window into paradise.
0:00:57 > 0:00:58SHE CHUCKLES
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Basically she makes me want to frolic in that garden.
0:01:04 > 0:01:05I mean, who doesn't?
0:01:11 > 0:01:17What is it about Botticelli's Birth Of Venus that makes it so timeless?
0:01:18 > 0:01:22This is an image that has been reimagined by countless artists,
0:01:22 > 0:01:25fashion designers, musicians, and film-makers.
0:01:28 > 0:01:33Modern artists have attempted to echo and subvert it,
0:01:33 > 0:01:37but it's hard to beat the pure sensual thrill and ground-breaking,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41radical originality of Botticelli's masterpiece.
0:01:41 > 0:01:42# She's got it
0:01:42 > 0:01:45# Yeah, baby, she's got it... #
0:01:45 > 0:01:48She is ready to be... bedded, basically.
0:01:48 > 0:01:53And that's what makes her so sexually alluring, really, to the Renaissance man.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58It's so striking cos it's like a wide-screen cinema.
0:01:58 > 0:02:00There she's standing, naked on this shell
0:02:00 > 0:02:02with all this activity around her,
0:02:02 > 0:02:04which really is what intrigued me.
0:02:04 > 0:02:09I think throughout history you've looked at this Venus and just gone,
0:02:09 > 0:02:12"Yeah, that is a sexy woman, that's the woman I want to look like."
0:02:12 > 0:02:16I mean, it's probably fair to say, after the Mona Lisa
0:02:16 > 0:02:20it's the most recognisable painting in the world.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24And, yet, for centuries she was a forgotten treasure
0:02:24 > 0:02:26and banished into obscurity.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32This Venus has been re-born more than once.
0:02:32 > 0:02:33And it is a story that tells us
0:02:33 > 0:02:38much about the changing attitudes towards art and beauty.
0:02:38 > 0:02:42My name is Samantha Roddick. I'm an artist
0:02:42 > 0:02:45who founded the erotic emporium Coco de Mer.
0:02:45 > 0:02:51And I've always been fascinated by our relationship with sex and sexuality.
0:02:51 > 0:02:54I want to unravel the source of this painting's allure,
0:02:54 > 0:02:58and discover why it continues to cast its spell on us.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03It's a painting about light and love,
0:03:03 > 0:03:05that still speaks to us today
0:03:05 > 0:03:07because it's celebrating life itself.
0:03:23 > 0:03:28Botticelli's Venus was the first Renaissance enchantress.
0:03:31 > 0:03:35And though she might be over 500 years old,
0:03:35 > 0:03:38for me, Venus is a very modern kind of beauty.
0:03:40 > 0:03:43This painting is not just a famous depiction
0:03:43 > 0:03:45of an idealised woman -
0:03:45 > 0:03:49it is a joyful celebration of female sexuality.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54It was most likely created to adorn the chamber
0:03:54 > 0:03:57of a newly married bride, and it manages to combine
0:03:57 > 0:04:01a sense of innocence and purity
0:04:01 > 0:04:02with the erotic.
0:04:03 > 0:04:08There are so very few creative representations
0:04:08 > 0:04:11that really, truly celebrate sex.
0:04:11 > 0:04:15A lot of the times we are battling with our relationship with sex
0:04:15 > 0:04:20and sexuality, but this is about beauty and the natural elements
0:04:20 > 0:04:25of sexuality that are all within us, but very rarely expressed.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35So what IS the key to this painting's power?
0:04:35 > 0:04:38Most people, if asked to describe it, will tell you that, actually,
0:04:38 > 0:04:41there's this extraordinary golden-haired creature
0:04:41 > 0:04:43rising out of a shell.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46It's brilliantly iconic.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49It's got an extraordinary clarity about it.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53That central figure is completely compelling.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56It's very, very crisply delineated, you know.
0:04:56 > 0:04:59You look at the contours, and in fact, of course, what you do is
0:04:59 > 0:05:01you look at the figure in the centre.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05Most people, I suspect, forget that there's anything else going on in the picture.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08It's quite a big picture. You know, there are figures in the corners,
0:05:08 > 0:05:10symbolic elements.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14It is a dreamlike image of Venus,
0:05:14 > 0:05:18the goddess of love, known to the Greeks as Aphrodite,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20floating on a seashell.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25But the painting is actually misnamed,
0:05:25 > 0:05:30as it doesn't show her birth, but her arrival at the coast of Cyprus -
0:05:30 > 0:05:33blown to shore by the winds, Zephyr and Chloris.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38To the right, a young woman, likely to be Hora,
0:05:38 > 0:05:40the goddess associated with spring,
0:05:40 > 0:05:42is waiting to clothe her.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45And there she's standing, naked on this shell
0:05:45 > 0:05:47with all this activity around her,
0:05:47 > 0:05:49which, really, I find, is what intrigued me.
0:05:49 > 0:05:53Somebody's rushing in with a robe, the winds are blowing...
0:05:53 > 0:05:57And she's sort of half-heartedly covering one boob,
0:05:57 > 0:06:02and then you have these zephyrs, these winds, blowing her off the sea
0:06:02 > 0:06:06but what they're also doing is blowing the incredibly beautiful drapery
0:06:06 > 0:06:10that this figure on the right-hand side is kind of trying to bring in
0:06:10 > 0:06:13to cover the naked figure of Venus, which is not going to work
0:06:13 > 0:06:16because you've got the winds on the other side
0:06:16 > 0:06:17blowing them off all the time,
0:06:17 > 0:06:19and it's this sort of brilliant thing
0:06:19 > 0:06:22where she's just not going to get covered up.
0:06:25 > 0:06:28The bulrushes in the corner are possibly a phallic reference
0:06:28 > 0:06:31to the original myth of the birth of Venus -
0:06:31 > 0:06:36she was born from the sea foam after Saturn had castrated his own father
0:06:36 > 0:06:39and thrown the genitals into the sea.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43A scene which would have made for a very different painting.
0:06:46 > 0:06:50The roses are one of the symbols which represent Venus.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54Botticelli may have been inspired by the poem based on
0:06:54 > 0:06:57one of Homer's hymns, which described
0:06:57 > 0:07:01a girl divine of face, drifting upon a shell,
0:07:01 > 0:07:03delighting the very heavens.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12The staging of the figures echoes that of a well-known scene at the time -
0:07:12 > 0:07:14the baptism of Christ.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19But while the form might have been familiar,
0:07:19 > 0:07:23the content of Botticelli's scene was ground-breaking.
0:07:24 > 0:07:26The Birth Of Venus was doubly daring,
0:07:26 > 0:07:30because not only did it present a beautiful, large-scale female nude,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34it was also depicting a pagan mythology.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38Botticelli was a pioneer,
0:07:38 > 0:07:42combining complex elements to create his visual world.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46He had to innovate because nobody had painted scenes like this before.
0:07:58 > 0:08:03Sandro Botticelli began his career when the Renaissance
0:08:03 > 0:08:07was coming into full bloom here in Florence.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11His Birth Of Venus had been preceded by the rebirth of interest
0:08:11 > 0:08:14in the classical world of Greece and Rome.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19Botticelli was a close contemporary and acquaintance
0:08:19 > 0:08:21of Leonardo da Vinci.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25But whereas Leonardo was fascinated by science and anatomy,
0:08:25 > 0:08:30Sandro's most famous works were inspired by myth and philosophy
0:08:31 > 0:08:34Botticelli's famous patrons, the Medicis,
0:08:34 > 0:08:38were fascinated by the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42Especially the idea of divine love -
0:08:42 > 0:08:46that beauty could be a way to experience and celebrate God.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51This marked a fundamental shift from the thinking of the Middle Ages,
0:08:51 > 0:08:54when beauty, especially female beauty,
0:08:54 > 0:08:58had been shunned, and nudity associated with sin.
0:08:59 > 0:09:03Botticelli's Venus was a type of nude that hadn't been seen
0:09:03 > 0:09:05for close to 1,000 years.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10He was one of the key artists that brought a sense of celebration
0:09:10 > 0:09:14to sex and sensuality back into Western culture.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18It's almost like a golden moment in the history of how
0:09:18 > 0:09:21women are represented in art, because Botticelli,
0:09:21 > 0:09:26on the one hand he's freeing art and freeing thought
0:09:26 > 0:09:31from the hatred of the flesh that had dominated the Middle Ages,
0:09:31 > 0:09:34and he's saying, "Look, look, behold the beauty of the body
0:09:34 > 0:09:36"and the beauty of women's bodies."
0:09:36 > 0:09:39And he's saying that, but he's also kind of finding
0:09:39 > 0:09:41a new religion in it.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48The painting is much more than just
0:09:48 > 0:09:51a beautiful aphrodisiac for a newly married couple.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56It illustrates that sex can be divine.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00But the Birth Of Venus was not the only time
0:10:00 > 0:10:03that Botticelli painted the goddess of love.
0:10:14 > 0:10:18Another of Botticelli's paintings was made a few years beforehand
0:10:18 > 0:10:20and is often seen as its companion piece.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24It essentially depicts the garden of Venus
0:10:24 > 0:10:27and is almost just as famous -
0:10:27 > 0:10:29the Primavera.
0:10:29 > 0:10:32About 100 years ago, of the two Botticelli paintings
0:10:32 > 0:10:35that face each other in the Uffizi,
0:10:35 > 0:10:40the Venus and the Primavera, - a much more complicated picture -
0:10:40 > 0:10:43the Primavera was by far the most famous
0:10:43 > 0:10:45because the Victorians found it much more interesting.
0:10:45 > 0:10:50It sort of is more interesting, but in our sort of increasingly
0:10:50 > 0:10:55sexualised society, Venus has become the one that we go to,
0:10:55 > 0:11:00I think because she is...well, I mean, you know, it's simpler,
0:11:00 > 0:11:01she's sexier,
0:11:01 > 0:11:05but also she does have something to say,
0:11:05 > 0:11:09and she's not trying to kind of titillate.
0:11:09 > 0:11:13- Right.- She's just, she's just being
0:11:13 > 0:11:16and that gives her a certain power,
0:11:16 > 0:11:20I think, that an awful lot of nudes don't have.
0:11:20 > 0:11:21# What are you looking at? #
0:11:24 > 0:11:27In our oversexed culture,
0:11:27 > 0:11:29nudity has become almost banal,
0:11:29 > 0:11:33with none of Venus's quiet allure.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37The emptiness of today's sexual imagery is cleverly suggested
0:11:37 > 0:11:41in photographer David LaChapelle's reimagined Venus,
0:11:41 > 0:11:45depicting her as a type of modern-day glamour model.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49Andy Warhol, on the other hand,
0:11:49 > 0:11:52would give Venus the full screen goddess treatment.
0:11:55 > 0:11:57His screen print accentuated
0:11:57 > 0:11:59her mysterious self-possession.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05I think that there's something about what Botticelli does in
0:12:05 > 0:12:09many of his female faces, which is that he gives them
0:12:09 > 0:12:12a sense of introspection - they're looking inward,
0:12:12 > 0:12:14they've got their own thoughts,
0:12:14 > 0:12:16they've got their own intentions.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24Some believe that Botticelli drew inspiration for
0:12:24 > 0:12:27the face of Venus from a great Florentine beauty
0:12:27 > 0:12:29called Simonetta Vespucci.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33But Sandro first became famous for works
0:12:33 > 0:12:35that were iconic in a very different sense.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40He was celebrated for his paintings of Madonnas,
0:12:40 > 0:12:44and many of their facial features can be seen in his goddess of love.
0:12:47 > 0:12:51It's a thought that would have been utterly blasphemous at the time,
0:12:51 > 0:12:53but it does make me wonder,
0:12:53 > 0:12:55is Botticelli's Venus
0:12:55 > 0:12:59essentially a sexually empowered version of the Virgin Mary?
0:13:09 > 0:13:12The French artist Orlan would echo this notion
0:13:12 > 0:13:15in a series of photographs where she unveiled herself,
0:13:15 > 0:13:18going from a chaste holy woman
0:13:18 > 0:13:20to a naked Venus.
0:13:20 > 0:13:24Provocative today, her images only confirm the power of the original.
0:13:26 > 0:13:28Goddess, Virgin or both?
0:13:28 > 0:13:30It's not hard to imagine the effect
0:13:30 > 0:13:34which the glory of Venus's nakedness must have had.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37She is very sexually charged in this.
0:13:37 > 0:13:41I mean, she's a full-frontal naked woman,
0:13:41 > 0:13:45but there is this hint of modesty there
0:13:45 > 0:13:48where she's covering her breasts and she's covering her genitalia,
0:13:48 > 0:13:53as you see in classical representations of her as well,
0:13:53 > 0:13:57and this makes her alluring to Renaissance men,
0:13:57 > 0:14:01because anything other than that, it's just too full-on,
0:14:01 > 0:14:04it's too intense and it's even said that
0:14:04 > 0:14:09if men were to view Venus full-on, it would've driven them mad.
0:14:09 > 0:14:13You know, the full intensity of that sexuality was almost too much for them to bear.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24It's ironic that an image created to be looked at privately
0:14:24 > 0:14:27is today one of the most viewed paintings in the world.
0:14:29 > 0:14:34But its journey from bridal suite to worldwide icon was far from smooth.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39Not long after Botticelli's masterpiece was created,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41it was pretty much forgotten...
0:14:42 > 0:14:45..and could've easily have been lost to us for ever.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51Because if Florence at this time was a place of great creative inspiration,
0:14:51 > 0:14:54it was also one of religious upheaval.
0:14:56 > 0:14:59The city came under the influence of the religious zealot
0:14:59 > 0:15:02Girolamo Savonarola.
0:15:03 > 0:15:07Savonarola believed, even in religious paintings,
0:15:07 > 0:15:09that beauty was a distraction from God.
0:15:10 > 0:15:14He held burnings of works of art right here in this square,
0:15:14 > 0:15:17that were known as the Bonfire of the Vanities.
0:15:17 > 0:15:21This led to a sudden change in the creative climate of Florence,
0:15:21 > 0:15:23which greatly affected Botticelli.
0:15:26 > 0:15:30The ambiguity of Botticelli's mythological, pagan paintings
0:15:30 > 0:15:32left him especially open to attack.
0:15:34 > 0:15:36During his last decade,
0:15:36 > 0:15:39Botticelli would shun the themes he explored in the Birth Of Venus,
0:15:39 > 0:15:43returning to a more medieval style of devotional imagery.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49Savonarola would eventually be burned at the stake...
0:15:51 > 0:15:56..but this episode would have a significant effect on Botticelli's reputation.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02Almost everything earlier scholars thought they knew about
0:16:02 > 0:16:05the life of Botticelli came from the pen of Giorgio Vasari,
0:16:05 > 0:16:09the first real chronicler of the Renaissance.
0:16:10 > 0:16:14Vasari would mainly skim over Botticelli's great mythological works,
0:16:14 > 0:16:20and instead caricatured him as an eccentric who squandered time illustrating Dante.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26Botticelli would soon become eclipsed by artists like
0:16:26 > 0:16:28Michelangelo and Leonardo.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Times and styles were moving on and Botticelli was getting left behind.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41Artists such as Raphael were more interested in realism
0:16:41 > 0:16:43than mythic fantasy,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47and compared to Titian's Venus Of Urbino,
0:16:47 > 0:16:49painted just a few decades later...
0:16:51 > 0:16:53..well, Botticelli seemed
0:16:53 > 0:16:56charmingly old-fashioned in comparison.
0:17:01 > 0:17:03And as for Venus?
0:17:05 > 0:17:07It is believed the Venus and Primavera would spend
0:17:07 > 0:17:12most of the next 300 years quietly displaying their glory
0:17:12 > 0:17:16in a bedroom in one of the minor Medici palaces.
0:17:21 > 0:17:25The paintings were brought to the great Uffizi Gallery in 1815,
0:17:25 > 0:17:29but would spend decades in storage.
0:17:32 > 0:17:36The goddess of love had been relegated to the basement,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40but she wasn't done bewitching us just yet.
0:17:50 > 0:17:52During the 19th century,
0:17:52 > 0:17:56the generation of Italian painters before Raphael,
0:17:56 > 0:18:00that had been dismissed as obsolete, began to be reappraised.
0:18:00 > 0:18:04The group of painters that called themselves the Pre-Raphaelites,
0:18:04 > 0:18:07including Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
0:18:07 > 0:18:09were attracted to the sense of poetic romanticism
0:18:09 > 0:18:13and purity that they saw in Botticelli's work.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20Botticelli's wistful angels were exiled no more.
0:18:23 > 0:18:27The upcoming Botticelli Reimagined exhibition,
0:18:27 > 0:18:29at London's Victoria and Albert Museum,
0:18:29 > 0:18:34shines a spotlight on how Botticelli's artistic fortunes
0:18:34 > 0:18:36have fared over the years,
0:18:36 > 0:18:41showing how artists have echoed his most famous images in their own work.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47The Victorians seemed to welcome the Birth Of Venus
0:18:47 > 0:18:50as the acceptable face of female sensuality.
0:18:50 > 0:18:54Botticelli's Venus was beautiful because she was shy,
0:18:54 > 0:18:57and inspired tenderness, not lust...
0:18:58 > 0:19:01..or at least that's what THEY said.
0:19:02 > 0:19:07It's very simple, that sort of rich Victorian businessmen,
0:19:07 > 0:19:10who collected pictures, liked pictures of female nudes
0:19:10 > 0:19:14- but they felt much easier if they represented goddesses.- Right!
0:19:14 > 0:19:18Perhaps if simply they could sort of say,
0:19:18 > 0:19:20"Oh, well, it's Venus, it's..."
0:19:20 > 0:19:21It's permissible.
0:19:21 > 0:19:25It's permissible. It makes quite a difference in terms of
0:19:25 > 0:19:27how you're judged.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30- Right.- And, at that time,
0:19:30 > 0:19:33there's a real search for beauty and there's a real search for
0:19:33 > 0:19:37particular kinds of beauty, for new sorts of beauty,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40so that you find that the Pre-Raphaelite painters
0:19:40 > 0:19:43and the Aesthetic painters of the late 1880s and '90s,
0:19:43 > 0:19:45they're really fascinated in
0:19:45 > 0:19:50finding new ways of expressing their ideals of beauty
0:19:50 > 0:19:54and, for them, sort of Botticelli just becomes this
0:19:54 > 0:19:58perfect hook on which to hang so many of their ideas.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13Apart from being so famous, it is one of the most memorable figures
0:20:13 > 0:20:15and because the picture is famous,
0:20:15 > 0:20:20it's now much quoted by other artists,
0:20:20 > 0:20:24it's quoted by people who are doing advertising, and this simply comes
0:20:24 > 0:20:28back to the fact that it is such a famous image in itself.
0:20:34 > 0:20:35But it was in the 20th century
0:20:35 > 0:20:38when the Botticelli brand really began to take off.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43Venus's dreamlike quality positively begged
0:20:43 > 0:20:46for reinterpretation by the surrealists.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49When the Birth of Venus toured America, as a part
0:20:49 > 0:20:54of the World Fair in 1939, the mass popularity of the image exploded.
0:20:56 > 0:20:58The clarity of the composition,
0:20:58 > 0:21:01the way it was open to interpretation
0:21:01 > 0:21:05and the fact it was easy to reproduce, meant it not only
0:21:05 > 0:21:09became iconic, it became increasingly commodified.
0:21:10 > 0:21:15And it wasn't long before early pop art began playing with it as well.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23Alain Jacquet depicted her emerging from the waves,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26but in the guise of a Shell petrol pump.
0:21:26 > 0:21:28The Botticelli look and pose
0:21:28 > 0:21:33became an often-quoted reference point for photographers.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37She even got the Bond treatment when a Venus-like Ursula Andress
0:21:37 > 0:21:40emerged out of the sea holding a conch shell
0:21:40 > 0:21:42in Dr No.
0:21:44 > 0:21:46# Underneath the mango... #
0:21:46 > 0:21:50By the 1970s, Botticelli's Venus had been transformed
0:21:50 > 0:21:55into an international trademark, a synonym for ideal feminine beauty.
0:21:56 > 0:22:00And few would play with the image of Venus quite as memorably
0:22:00 > 0:22:05as film director and former Monty Python cartoonist, Terry Gilliam.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10She is there static, elegant, naked, sexy
0:22:10 > 0:22:13and there's the girl running with the robe.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16But the robe wouldn't look so good if the winds weren't blowing,
0:22:16 > 0:22:18nor would her hair look so beautiful.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20So now we stick the wind machine in on the left-hand side
0:22:20 > 0:22:24and it's like, this is a commercial for shampoo.
0:22:24 > 0:22:26I agree with you.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33She's ended up in this Python cartoon where her hair comes
0:22:33 > 0:22:36out of a meat grinder, which becomes hair,
0:22:36 > 0:22:37which becomes her.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41It goes from something violent and ugly and meat,
0:22:41 > 0:22:46the raw materials that make up our physicality,
0:22:46 > 0:22:48and there she is sublime.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51And then, of course, being naked and beautiful, she kind of turns me on
0:22:51 > 0:22:54in a sexy kind of way. Why wouldn't...?
0:22:54 > 0:22:56So if she's going to turn me on, I'm going to turn her on
0:22:56 > 0:22:58and she has something that looks like a radio dial
0:22:58 > 0:23:01that you switch on. So that's what her nipple becomes.
0:23:01 > 0:23:05A hand comes in and turns it on and she dances for me.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13You've actually taken two different styles of a sexy woman,
0:23:13 > 0:23:16one the old dancer, like Josephine Baker,
0:23:16 > 0:23:19and it's funny at the same time.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23So, I suppose I like the idea of modernising paintings.
0:23:23 > 0:23:26They had their context in their own time
0:23:26 > 0:23:30but now let's take it off the wall in a museum and put it on
0:23:30 > 0:23:35television and make people laugh or smile or even recognise something.
0:23:35 > 0:23:38- Then they'll go to the museum and see it for real.- Yeah.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46As well as deconstructing Botticelli's goddess for Python,
0:23:46 > 0:23:50Gilliam would brilliantly recreate the painting in his film
0:23:50 > 0:23:54The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen,
0:23:54 > 0:23:59with a 17-year-old Uma Thurman, in one of her first film roles,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03bringing to life Venus's hypnotising gaze.
0:24:06 > 0:24:09I remember when we had screenings of the film,
0:24:09 > 0:24:12with a lot of young men in there, there would be a moment when
0:24:12 > 0:24:14she would look at them straight into the audience
0:24:14 > 0:24:16- and they would go quiet.- Wow!
0:24:16 > 0:24:19On one hand, they're all getting very excited by her because she's
0:24:19 > 0:24:23this full-figured beautiful girl, then suddenly she looks at them.
0:24:23 > 0:24:25"Oh, what are you looking at?"
0:24:25 > 0:24:28- Yeah.- I always loved that reaction.
0:24:28 > 0:24:30I think he is doing the same thing.
0:24:30 > 0:24:34Venus is not ashamed, she's not hiding,
0:24:34 > 0:24:37- she's, "This is what I am."- Right.
0:24:37 > 0:24:40It's bold and I love that about her.
0:24:40 > 0:24:45Do you think she is the ultimate male fantasy?
0:24:45 > 0:24:46Oh, why not?
0:24:46 > 0:24:49- You don't get much better than that.- No.
0:24:49 > 0:24:51I think he really cracked that one.
0:24:52 > 0:24:55Shall we...dance?
0:24:57 > 0:24:59It's the original painting's radical
0:24:59 > 0:25:03and very modern self-confidence as much as its pure
0:25:03 > 0:25:08and perfect beauty, that, I think, draws modern artists to
0:25:08 > 0:25:12constantly reinterpret Botticelli's masterpiece.
0:25:14 > 0:25:18While we have Botticelli's Venus depicting
0:25:18 > 0:25:22the idealisation of female sexuality,
0:25:22 > 0:25:23we have the brilliant
0:25:23 > 0:25:25Joel-Peter Witkin,
0:25:25 > 0:25:28transporting a transgender in her place,
0:25:28 > 0:25:30which really brings into
0:25:30 > 0:25:36question what is female identity all about and who can really claim it?
0:25:41 > 0:25:45Orlan, one of Venus's biggest modern worshippers would also
0:25:45 > 0:25:48revisit her earlier work making a performance piece which
0:25:48 > 0:25:54involved having plastic surgery to make herself look more like Venus
0:25:54 > 0:25:58posing the question, what does it take to live up to such an ideal?
0:26:00 > 0:26:03Botticelli's painting continues to
0:26:03 > 0:26:07offer something to each new generation.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11And today it remains a favourite of post-modern artists,
0:26:11 > 0:26:16a type of shorthand for Western high art in general.
0:26:16 > 0:26:20And no matter how many fridge magnets and postcards this image
0:26:20 > 0:26:22is used to sell,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26for me, the original remains thrillingly alive.
0:26:29 > 0:26:31I can't think of another artist who
0:26:31 > 0:26:34gives the same lift as Botticelli does.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38I think that there's something truly innocent
0:26:38 > 0:26:41and redemptive about his vision.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48That ideal of beauty that we get from Botticelli
0:26:48 > 0:26:49still haunts us because,
0:26:49 > 0:26:51in the end, life is beautiful
0:26:51 > 0:26:55and can be beautiful and Botticelli shows us that in
0:26:55 > 0:26:59one of the most simple and enduring ways that anyone has ever done.
0:27:02 > 0:27:05You can't win, you can't diminish Venus because she's Venus.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07She is right at the top,
0:27:07 > 0:27:11she is literally the most desirable creature in the universe.
0:27:15 > 0:27:17Botticelli is selling happiness,
0:27:17 > 0:27:21he has put Venus in a position where she doesn't feel
0:27:21 > 0:27:23ashamed about her body,
0:27:23 > 0:27:26she doesn't feel ashamed about her sexuality
0:27:26 > 0:27:30and she does not feel ashamed about her nudity.
0:27:30 > 0:27:35So much of today is driven to make us feel ashamed of who we are,
0:27:35 > 0:27:40so Botticelli's image is one of the only images that I know that
0:27:40 > 0:27:43I can truly say that is sexually celebratory.
0:27:43 > 0:27:45One without shame.
0:27:49 > 0:27:56Confident and bold, intellectual, spiritual and erotic.
0:27:58 > 0:28:01A truly divine icon.