Venus Verticordia 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted Venus Verticordia at an unknown date, rendering her in oil. Rossetti was part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who rejected what they saw as the mechanistic approach to art education that derived from the High Renaissance. The group looked to medieval and early Renaissance art for inspiration. In Venus Verticordia, the Roman goddess of love, Venus, is depicted as a sensual, earthly figure. She holds an apple, referencing the story of the Judgement of Paris, and an arrow alluding to her power to incite desire. Consider the Victorian context of this painting. Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites challenged the Royal Academy's art establishment by looking to a period before the High Renaissance for aesthetic inspiration. More radically, in depicting mythological subjects in a realistic style, Rossetti imbued the classical with a modern sensibility. Art historians examine letters, diaries, and exhibition reviews to reconstruct the context in which art was made and interpreted. We can better understand the public role of this work and the politics of its imagery when we realize it's rooted in a specific time and place.