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50 free The Birth of Venus trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Birth of Venus is the goddess on a shell that everyone recognises and almost no one can date, and this quiz digs into what is actually known about Botticelli's most famous picture. The easy questions cover the artist, the city and museum where it hangs, who is blowing from the left and what Venus is standing on. From there it moves into how the painting was made: two pieces of canvas sewn together, a blue-tinted gesso ground, gold highlights added after framing, greens that have darkened with time, and a pose whose weight no real body could hold. The harder end is for art-history readers: the Venus Pudica type and the Venus de' Medici, Apelles and Campaspe, the Homeric Hymn printed in Florence in 1488, Poliziano's Stanze, the two Lorenzos and the laurel pun, the 1499 inventory that upset a century of assumptions, the Villa di Castello, Kenneth Clark's 'Gothic ivory', Simonetta Vespucci's open coffin, Savonarola's bonfire and the painting's later life on Italian ten-cent coins, Adobe's splash screen and a Lady Gaga album. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the painting, Botticelli, the Primavera and the figures around them, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Renaissance, famous paintings and Greek mythology quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who painted The Birth of Venus?
Sandro Botticelli
He probably executed it in the mid-1480s, his most successful decade.
Q 02In which city does The Birth of Venus hang?
Florence
It hangs in the Uffizi, having arrived from a Medici country villa in the 19th century.
Q 03What is Venus standing in as she arrives at the shore?
A giant scallop shell
The impossible size of the shell was borrowed from classical depictions of the same subject.
Q 04Which wind god blows Venus toward the shore from the left of the picture?
Zephyrus
Lines radiating from his mouth show the wind; he carries a lighter breeze, probably Aura, who blows too.
Q 05The woman holding out a cloak on the right is one of which group of minor goddesses?
The Horae
The flowers on her dress suggest she is the Hour of Spring.
Q 06Which land is Venus probably arriving at in the painting?
Cythera or Cyprus
Both islands were regarded by the Greeks as territories of Venus.
Q 07When was the title 'The Birth of Venus' first given to the painting?
The nineteenth century
Strictly it shows the next scene in the story, the goddess arriving on land, blown by the wind.
Q 08What support is the painting on, unusually for Botticelli?
Canvas
Canvas was cheaper and increasingly popular for secular pictures destined for country villas.
Q 09How many pieces of cloth were sewn together to make the painting's support?
Two
They were sewn together before work began, over a gesso ground tinted blue.
Q 10What pigment was heavily used for the highlights on hair, wings and the shell?
Gold
It seems to have been applied after the painting was already framed.
Q 11What was probably used to make the 'cool gray varnish' that finished the painting?
Egg yolk
Modern testing also revealed pentimenti: the Hora originally wore low classical sandals.
Q 12Which pigment in the painting has darkened badly over time?
Green
The wings and orange-tree leaves are affected; corners hidden by the frame have fared better.
Q 13Which classical sculpture type gave the goddess her pose, hands covering breasts and groin?
Pudica
In ancient art that modest pose was never used for the newborn goddess rising from the sea.
Where was the Venus de' Medici, a marble Botticelli may have studied, recorded by 1559?
Q 21In what year were the Birth and the Primavera moved from Castello to the Uffizi?
1815
They had stayed together at the villa ever since they were first united there.
Q 22Which trees at the right, echoed in the Hora's wreath, pun on the name Lorenzo?
Laurel
The airborne flowers evoke the name of the city in the same punning way.
Q 23Which ancient text is generally agreed to be the closest precedent for the scene?
A Homeric Hymn
It was published in the city in 1488 by the Greek refugee Demetrios Chalkokondyles.
Whose poem Stanze per la giostra, on a Medici joust of 1475, describes a similar scene?
Rome
It is a first-century BC copy following the Praxitelean type and now stands in the Uffizi too.
Q 15Which art historian wrote that Venus's body 'follows the curve of a Gothic ivory'?
Kenneth Clark
He noted she lacks classical aplomb: her weight is not balanced either side of a plumb line, so she floats.
Q 16What is anatomically odd about the painted Venus?
Elongated neck and torso
Her weight also sits too far over the left leg for the pose to be held, and no figure casts a shadow.
Q 17Which freshwater plants in the left foreground are out of place on a sea shore?
Bulrushes
Botticelli never painted landscape with much realism, and the trees have gilded highlights.
Q 18Which Medici was long thought to have commissioned the painting for the Villa di Castello?
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco
Herbert Horne proposed it in 1908; the theory is now widely doubted.
Q 19What discovery, published in 1975, undermined the Medici-commission theory?
A 1499 inventory that omits it
Unlike the Primavera, the Birth is absent from the apparently complete list of that branch's art.
Q 20Who first mentioned the painting, having seen it at Castello before 1550?
Giorgio Vasari
He was himself painting in the villa in 1550 but had very possibly visited it earlier.
Angelo Poliziano
He was Lorenzo de' Medici's court poet; his version has multiple Horae and zephyrs.
Q 25Which lost ancient Greek painter's Venus, described by Pliny, was Botticelli emulating?
Apelles
A 1488 poem by Ugolino Verino hailed Botticelli as a reborn Apelles.
Q 26Whom did Alexander the Great supposedly give to the painter who fell for his model?
Campaspe
Pliny records the gift as a gesture of extreme magnanimity.
Q 27Which emperor did Pliny say dedicated the lost ancient Venus in the shrine of Julius Caesar?
Augustus
By Nero's day the picture had rotted and was replaced by one from Dorotheus.
Q 28Which Christian scene does the composition of central figure and raised arm echo?
The Baptism of Christ
The echo marks the start of Venus's 'ministry' of love, as baptism marked the start of Christ's.
Q 29Which Florentine beauty is traditionally, if doubtfully, said to be the model for Venus?
Simonetta Vespucci
She died aged about 22 in 1476 and was carried through the city in an open coffin.
Q 30In which Ligurian town, 'the port of Venus', was Botticelli's supposed model possibly born?
Portovenere
Poliziano wrote that, like Venus, she was born among the waves.