FLORENCE, ITALY – Botticelli’s Venus will not be loaned from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery to Turin’s Reggia di Venaria for the Milan Expo 2015 world’s fair, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said.
Franceschini noted that it only took a half hour more to get from Milan to Florence than from Milan to Turin.
“The general principle of the Expo is to bring visitors to the works and not bring the works to the visitors,” he said, recalling that the Calabrian ancient Greek warriors known as the Riace Bronzes had also been denied to next year’s flagship event in Italy. “It’s clear the Venus will stay in the Uffizi,” the minister said.
Botticelli was commissioned to paint the work by the Medici family of Florence, specifically Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici under the influence of his cousin Lorenzo de’ Medici, close friend to Botticelli.
It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as an adult woman, arriving at the sea-shore (which is related to the Venus Anadyomene motif). The painting is on display at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
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