Venus, painted on wood around 1482,  is one of a series of paintings commissioned by Florence's powerful Medici family. The goddess - symbol of love, beauty, fertility and prosperity in Greco-Roman mythology - was recast by Botticelli and his workshop who juxtaposed her contrapposto posture against numerous backdrops in variant works, most notably, the Birth of Venus, (1482), in which her floating vision balances atop an oyster shell, a Renaissance metaphor for the vulva. Some of these works hung in assorted Medici homes and even bedrooms, and may have incorporated personal aesthetic predilections. Painters sold different versions of identical or similar compositions to wealthy and less-wealthy clients alike during the Renaissance. This was especially evident in Botticelli's Madonna and Child images, which were produced more like fast moving consumer goods than objects of sanctity. If LVMH had existed in the Renaissance, Botticelli would have been their bag. 

Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, nicknamed 'Botticelli', (from 'botticello' meaning 'small wine cask'), had his moment from 1477-1490. The much-debated Primavera (Spring) and Athene and the Centaur were created at this time. The year before Venus, Pope  Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli to Rome - his only commission outside Florence - to decorate the walls of the recently completed Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, along with Ghirlandaio, Rosselli from Florence and Perugino from Umbria (Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes came 27 years later). On his return, Botticelli  painted Venus, along with Venus and Mars three years later. But the death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492 saw the lights dim on Botticelli's moment. Dominican preacher Giorlamo Savonarola, whose influence grew in Florence, denounced Botticelli's paintings as 'lascivious', along with certain books, and urged people to destroy such 'vanities'. In the face of such condemnation and the approach of younger artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, Botticelli faded into relative obscurity. Little commissioned and in bad health, he later died in 1510. His name didn't re-emerge until the 19th century with renewed interest in his, and Florentine artwork.