With all the attention being given to Wonder Woman due to the movie, I brought out my rendering of the Amazon Princess to show just what her origin was. You didn't know that Botticelli was a comic book artist? Of course he was, and a fantastic one at that. Up until the advent of photography and the decline of religion, fantasy counter-real or imaginal and mythical subjects made up the bulk of all human artwork. Sure, there's a lot of "realistic" art before that but by the 20th century "realistic" renderings of mythic subject matter had faded away into more modern ways of seeing. Monet's haystacks buried the nationalistic dragons and Pre-Raphaelite fairies and we were left with endless portraits of bored women and panoramas of gnarly landscapes. If you wanted to paint something mythic in modern times, you would be a popular artist like Maxfield Parrish. Botticelli's wonderful imaginings became an endless subject for parody, just like this.
Ink and watercolor on paper, 7" x 8", late 1980. Restored in Photoshop.
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