Botticelli's most famous work is the much copied Birth of Venus 1485.This masterpiece was painted for the villa of Lorenzo Medici and is now in the Uffizi in Florence. The Birth of Venus (in Italian: Nascita di Venere) is a oil painting art by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (which is related to the Venus Anadyomene motif). The painting is held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The picture hung in the country villa of the Medici along with "Primavera", indicating that the work was commissioned by the Medici family. Venus rises from the sea, looking like a classical statue and floating on a seashell, in what is surely one of the most recognisable images in art history.
On Venus' right is Zephyrus, God of Winds, he carries with him the gentle breeze Aura and together they blow the Goddess of Love ashore. The Horae, Goddess of the Seasons, waits to receive Venus and spreads out a flower covered robe in readiness for the Love Goddess' arrival. The iconography of Birth of Venus painting is very similar to a description of the event (or rather, a description of a sculpture of the event) in a poem by Angelo Poliziano, the Stanze per la giostra. No single text provides the precise content of the painting, however, which has led scholars to propose many sources and interpretations. Art historians who specialize in the Italian Renaissance have found a Neoplatonic interpretation, which was most clearly articulated by Ernst Gombrich, to be the most enduring way to understand the painting.

Two other mythical subjects by Sandro's hand are still in existence, although it is very doubtful if he painted them before his journey to Rome, in the early months of 1481. One of these is the Birth of Venus which Vasari saw in the villa of Castello together with the Primavera. As in the case of the last-named picture, the composition was evidently derived from Poliziano's poem of the Giostra. In a passage adapted from one of the Homeric hymns, the poet tells us how the new-born Aphrodite was blown by the soft breath of the Zephyrs, on the foam of the Egean waves to shore. Heaven and earth, he sings, rejoice at her coming. The Hours wait to welcome her and spread a star-sown robe over her white limbs, countless flowers spring up in the grass where her feet will tread. All this exquisite imagery is faithfully reproduced in Sandro's oil paintings. He has represented his Venus Anadyomene laying one hand on her snowy breast, the other on her loose tresses of golden hair a form of virginal beauty and purity, as with feet resting on the golden shell she glides softly over the rippling surface of the waves. He has painted the winged Zephyrs hovering in the air linked fast together, blowing the goddess to the flower-strewn shore and the shower of single roses fluttering about her form. Only, instead of the three Hours of Homer's hymn and Poliziano's poem, he shows us one fair nymph, in a white robe, embroidered with blue corn-flowers, springing lightly forward to offer Venus a pink mantle sown with daisies. In the laurel groves along the shore, we see a courtly allusion to the " Laurel who sheltered the song-birds that carolled to the Tuscan painting spring," while in the background the eye roams across long reaches of silent sea to distant headlands sleeping under the cool grey light of early dawn.

In Alessandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1485), the goddess Venus [or Aphrodite as she is known in Greek mythology] emerges from the sea upon a shell in accordance with the myth that explains her birth. Her shell is pushed to the shore from the winds produced by the Zephyr wind-gods amid a shower of roses. As the goddess is about to step on the shore, one of the Nymphs reaches out to cover her with a purple cloak. This painting is among the most treasured masterpieces of the Renaissance painting.

Here Venus is shown as a beautiful and chaste goddess and symbol of the coming spring. At this time in Renaissance history, when almost all art was of Christian theme, nude women painting are not often depicted and when they are they symbolize sinful lust. Most paintings of women during the Middle Ages symbolize the Virgin Mary, showing her in a demure appearance with an angelic smile and covered head. So why did Botticelli paint the beautiful goddess, not only an obvious symbol of pagan mythology but also as a nude?