Teachers' Information

This is a very famous image (Botticelli's Venus Rising from The Sea is the most famous version) for such a small space. The handling of the detail and the clever use of illusion to suggest depth make it a really grand 'monumental' piece even though it is small. This is typical of the skill of Italian Renaissance carvers, trying to evoke the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome (particularly, as this was very much a Roman art – and 'theirs' as Italians). The raw material is a cryptocrystalline quartz, and may well have come from south Germany near Freiburg, an important source of this kind of mineral or hardstone right through the Renaissance and a centre of technology and skill. These collectors' pieces were usually kept in a cabinet and taken out one by one to be looked at: this one would certainly have been held up to the light to see the translucency, and would have been mounted with an open back to facilitate that.

Activities

1. Can your pupils think what problems the craftsmen may encounter in carving a gem like this?

2. Ask your pupils to design their own gem. They could take a famous picture and draw it smaller and more simply. The children could then try drawing their design as if they were looking across it as a relief: which bits would be flat? What shapes would come furthest out from the background?