ecstasy of Venus

ecstasy of Venus, 2022

We all possess archetypal images that live in our own individual psyche.

In a new piece I am working on, ecstasy of Venus, I am unraveling a core visual archetype of Venus embedded in my mind. Astrologically, Venus is the embodiment of relationship, pleasure, love, and creativity. She is the dual ruler of the airy, harmony-seeking sign Libra, and the comforting earth sign Taurus. In Birth of Venus, as painted by Botticelli, the goddess is born from a shell, and… according to Wiki <3 :

“For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them. Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly.[29] A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love.”

Birth of Venus, 1484-86 by Sandro Botticelli

ecstasy of Venus, 2022

I am discovering that many of my personal archetypal visuals are slices of high art masterpieces, warped and carved by the kaleidoscope of my own spirit. Below are two art historical references to “ecstasy” I remembered while painting this — Bernini’s sculpture, and Dalí’s collage. I am visually combining works by Bernini, Dalí, and Botticelli, to form a new story of the orgasmic quality of divine love.

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, 1647-52 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

upper right: The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, 1933 by Salvador Dalí

xx, jess