Venus as a rheumatic takes as its starting point in the modern-day assumption that the real-life Venus from Sandro Botticelli´s painting "The Birth of Venus", Simonetta Vespucci, was suffering from juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The illness can give rise to complications such as tuberculosis, which was the cause of the untimely death of Vespucci. Another clue to the health status of the young woman is the signs of rheumatic illness visible in the painting, most notably in the depiction of Venus´ elongated and somewhat disproportionate limbs. In art history, Botticelli is appointed one of the precursors of Mannerism, a new current in Renaissance painting which favoured a kind of 'natural' extension and distortion of the limbs. - In other words a style of painting that corresponds to the rheumatic pathology. 

The piece is a comment on the claims of knowledge made by the arts and medical science respectively, In addition, it takes issue with and draws attention to the potent battle ground, the territory of dispute and conquest the female body still is.