Is it too morbid to want to witness something that causes the deaths of probably thousands of people?!
Probably says a lot about me! 😬

What event do you wish you could witness?

But I can’t deny that I love a good natural disaster! One that is so epic it passes down through history! I also thought about the eruption of Krakatoa and at Thera, but having been to Pompeii and walking up Vesuvius, there’s more of a connection there

You can still go and see where he is buried as well as Simonetta to pay your respects if you visit the church today and which I have done myself many times!

What’s your favourite portrait?

When he died, as he requested he was buried at the foot of her tomb in the Ognissanti, which was both the local church for the Vespucci family and Botticelli himself.

Unfortunately, she had passed away a few years before this painting was made as she died very young, but she was said to be Botticelli’s muse and you can see her influence in a lot of his work.

Venus herself is believed to actually be a portrait of a renowned beauty of the Renaissance, Simonetta Vespucci.

This painting is a perfect example of renaissance art coming out of Florence at the time, with an emphasis on classical mythology rather than religious imagery, and would have been groundbreaking at the time for such a large portrayal of a female nude.

It’s assumed the lady represents a minor Greek goddess known as a Hora, this one in particular due to the floral decoration of her dress, could be the Hora of Spring.

On her left, is the wind god Zephyr, and (possibly a depiction of) Aura (a lighter breeze) blowing her ashore and a lady is ready on land to dress her in a cloak.

It was painted in the mid 1480s by Florence artist Sandro Botticelli and is thought to have been commissioned by a member of the Medici family.
It shows the myth of the birth of Venus (clues in the name!) when she arrives at the shores of Cyprus after being created from the foam of the sea.

It’s probably one of the most famous paintings in the world for the central figure of Venus riding a shell, but not everyone knows much more than that.

People that know me, know how much I adore Renaissance Florence and how much I obsess over this painting! It’s everywhere in our house! I even have a tattoo of Venus on my back! I just adore the subject, the style and the artist!

Today, we remember Émilie du Châtelet as a founding voice of modern physics and a reminder that curiosity knows no gender.

But for centuries, her name was overshadowed by the men around her, even her famous partner, Voltaire with whom she is most known for their relationship than for her own brilliance. Voltaire wrote of her, “A great man whose only fault was being a woman.”

She also wrote Foundations of Physics in 1740, bridging the ideas of Newton and Leibniz and bringing complex science to a wider audience.

Her achievements:
Translated Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French and her version is still the most used today.
Added her own groundbreaking commentary explaining energy as proportional to mass × velocity² (mv²), which was a key step toward the modern concept of kinetic energy.

Denied a formal education because she was a woman, Émilie taught herself advanced mathematics and physics at home. With the help of private tutors, and due to her own intelligence, she became one of the great minds of the Enlightenment.