 So, looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first raise a physical response in viewers which then lifted their minds towards the godly.A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love.The composition, with a central nude figure, and one to the side with an arm raised above the head of the first, and winged beings in attendance, would have reminded its Renaissance viewers of the traditional iconography of the Baptism of Christ, marking the start of his ministry on earth.