Comparing Rimbaud's Vénus Anadyomène and Botticelli's The Birth of Venus

Extract

[...] But the poem presents a lexical field of sight and taste, unlike the painting which can only present sight since it is its pictorial code. The goddess is presented pejoratively by mentioning her rounded hips, her protruding shoulder blades as if she was losing her feminine attributes. But on the painting, she is marked by sensuality with her poorly hidden breasts. Furthermore, the goddess of beauty is mentioned as a back, that is a pig that smells bad. Yet, on the painting, three other characters surround her closely, without seeming to be bothered by any smell. [...]

[...] Finally, she is described with the oxymoron of the fall, prolonged by the pejorative reference to the rectal lesion, while on the painting, the characters give thanks for her beauty. A goddess designated as young or senile? Next, on Botticelli's painting, we observe a young blonde goddess, whose silky and long hair hides her lower attributes. These become in the poem 'strongly pomaded brown', that is, fat. By the way, the theme of fat returns with the 'fat and gray neck' marking thus the old age. [...]

[...] The qualifying adjective thus marks the old age and correlates with the coffin of the first verse which is the same color as the shell. We therefore have an antithetical tension between death and the title marking the birth of Venus. Furthermore, she is qualified under a deficiency in the poem while on the painting, she seems to be stable, or even slightly modest. The deficiency is mental and physical in the poem. Finally, the poem qualifies her with the term 'Clara', which means 'clear' in Latin, just like on the painting where she wears a clear skin. [...]