Andy Warhol — Birth of Venus For Sale

Andy Warhol — Birth of Venus

Andy Warhol's Birth of Venus belongs to his 1984 portfolio Details of Renaissance Paintings, among his most explicitly art-historical projects. The series was initiated in 1983 when publishers Jörg Schellmann and Bernd Klüser invited Warhol to base a group of prints on Old Master paintings; alongside the Botticelli, the resulting portfolio also includes cropped details from works by Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. For his source, Warhol turned to Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485), held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, isolating Venus's face, neck and windswept hair while cropping out the shell and surrounding figures entirely.

The portfolio was published in an edition of 70, plus 18 artist's proofs, 5 printer's proofs and 5 hors commerce impressions, screenprinted on Arches Aquarelle paper. By applying his signature screenprint technique — developed over two decades on celebrity portraits and consumer imagery — to a five-centuries-old work of Western art history, Warhol collapsed the distinction between Renaissance masterpiece and mass-media icon, treating Botticelli's Venus with the same mechanical reproduction he had once applied to Marilyn Monroe. The cropped, close-up composition also strips the image of its original narrative context, transforming a mythological scene into a single, isolated fragment of beauty.

Each work at Guy Hepner is accompanied by full authentication documentation.