When painting or sketching, artists will often use a mirror to briefly reverse their view of a work that is difficult to see objectively because it has become too familiar from time spent working on it.

I enjoy applying that same idea to works of art that have become so iconic and familiar they are also difficult to see without cultural preconceptions.

I did it with Da Vinci’s La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa), and recently with Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Here, I’ve taken the way too familiar Botticelli masterpiece The Birth of Venus (which might be more accurately titled The Arrival of Venus, but that’s another story), and reversed it left to right in the hope that you can see it freshly, like a painting rather than a cultural artifact.

I had the delightful pleasure of seeing this painting in person on a trip to Florence some years ago, and seeing it reversed sparks my memory of the intensity of the experience.

On one level, Botticelli is painting naturalistically, in a largely representational manner, but when you start to appreciate the extent of the stylization and personal vision that Botticelli has applied to the faces and figures, the painting becomes more dreamlike and otherworldly.

I wrote about the painting in its proper orientation in this post: Eye Candy for Today: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

The images are taken from the very high resolution file (30,000 × 18,840 pixels, 211 MB), available on Wikimedia Commons.

Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon, Thomas Moran, oil on canvas, roughy 30 x 45″ ( 77 x 115 cm), in the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art (click on image for an enlargement).

There is a larger image on Wikipedia, though the color is off. I’ve taken that image and color corrected it to match the one on the Terra Foundation website to get my larger detail crops.

The Terra Foundaion is a worldwide oganization, which loans out to various museums. According to their website, this painting is currently on display at the Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom until September 30, 2026.

As a long time resident of the area in and around Philadelphia Pennsylvania, I’ve been to various points in the Wissahickon, the most dramatic terrain of which lies within the city limits.

I don’t remember seeing this particular view, so I don’t know if Moran has exaggerated here. Even in the 1860s, when this painting is dated, the valley was surrounded a populated area, though you’d never know it from the composition.

Moran captures the scene, and the essence of Autimn in the lush landscapes of southeastern Pennsylvania, with a combination of sensibilities, partly from his history as a Hudson River style painter, and partly from the increasing influence of the French Barbizon painters.

Happy Autumnal Equinox!