From Ursula Andress emerging from the sea in a James Bond film to fashion by Dolce & Gabbana, Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" has been one of the most influential works in modern art history.

An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London focuses on the legacy of the painting created in Renaissance Italy around 1485 through fashion, photography and the visual arts more broadly, AFP reports.

A grand tour organised by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the late 1930s helped to forge the global reputation of the work.

Co-curator Ana Debenedetti said part of its success is in the main subject: a woman with long blonde hair that fits the Western ideal of beauty.

"She fits the image of perfect beauty celebrated since the Middle Ages in poetry, literature and which was embedded in our imagination: the Western woman, blonde, with a pale complexion and a large forehead, blue eyes and a proud bearing," she told AFP.

The Venus is found on everything from the 1993 spring summer collection of Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana, to a 2014 video game by Japan's Tomoko Nagao where she is seen floating over Italian pasta.

Brazil's Vik Muniz depicted her in 2007 surrounded by computer detritus, while China's Yin Xin reimagined her with typically Asian features.