As a part of my attempt to study Italian I subscribe to a very useful service entitled “Easy Italian News”, which every day distributes a bulletin of world new in Italian. I find it useful not only because it provides a (rather minimal) opportunity to keep my knowledge of the language going, but because it broadcasts stories from around the world which never make it into our domestic news bulletins. Tonight I was struck in particular by the news the the celebrated picture of the birth of Venus, by Botticelli, has been adopted by the Italian tourist authorities as a symbol, intending that it would be used in a variety of different tourist promotions. My mind boggles as to how this is going to work out. I do find rather depressing, however, the idea that an image which has hitherto been taken as a symbol of the birth of the Renaissance should be appropriated as a means of promoting fashion or pizza.