When Botticelli painted the “Primavera” and “Birth of Venus” around 1480, he opened a veritable Pandora’s Box. No longer were Renaissance artists limited to simply dressing Christian saints in togas and sandals, they could now gradually introduce the very literature, philosophy, and religion of the ancient Greco-Roman world into their own art. This lecture unpacks Botticelli’s great mythological paintings by identifying their characters and meaning and assessing their artistic impact.