Sandro Botticelli was a renowned Italian painter of the Renaissance who had a distinctive style of depicting hair in his portraits of women. He is best known for his iconic painting, The Birth of Venus, that shows the goddess arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown, ankle-length hair a glorious mass of waves and twirls.

Botticelli used intricate hairstyles, rich colors, and lavish ornaments to create a sense of beauty and eroticism. But how is Botticelli’s pictorial treatment of hair consistent with the ideas of his time? And how does it connect with theories already propounded by some of his predecessors like Avicenna, Galen and Leonardo Da Vinci?