(I got most of the information of these paintings from my philosopy of beauty textbook: Arts & Ideas by William Flemming).
The Allegory of Spring (La Primavera) by Sandro Botticelli
Someone else mentioned this painting, but I love it, too. I how diaphanous some of the ladies' outfits are. I love the colors and the folds of the clothes.
It was painted for the instruction of a young cousin of Lorenzo de' Medici who numbered among his tutors the poet Poliziano and the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino.
The eight figures, with Venus in the center, form an octaval relationship, and together they run a gamut of myth and metaphor.
The drama reads from right to left:
The Allegory of Spring (La Primavera) by Sandro Botticelli
Someone else mentioned this painting, but I love it, too. I how diaphanous some of the ladies' outfits are. I love the colors and the folds of the clothes.
It was painted for the instruction of a young cousin of Lorenzo de' Medici who numbered among his tutors the poet Poliziano and the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino.
The eight figures, with Venus in the center, form an octaval relationship, and together they run a gamut of myth and metaphor.
The drama reads from right to left:
- The gentle south wind, Zephyr, is pursuing the shy nymph of springtime, Chloris.
- As he impregnates her, flowers spring from her lips and she is transformed into Flora in an appropriately flowery robe. ("I was once Chloris, who am now called Flora." - Roman poet Ovid.) This figure also refers to Florence, an allusion not lost on the citizens of the city of flowers.
- The blind Cupid is shooting an arrow toward Castitas (Chastity), the youthful central dancer of the three graces. Her partners are the bejeweled Pulchritudo (Beauty) and Voluptas (Passion). Their transparent, gauzy drapery vibrates with the figures of their dance to create a ballet of rhythmic flowing lines. (In his Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, historian Edgar Wind sees the dance as the initiation rites of the virginal Castitas into the fullness of beauty and passion.)
- At the far left stands Mercury, both the leader of the three graces and the fleet-footed god of the winds. As Virgil wrote, "With his staff he drives the winds and skims the turbid clouds." Lifting his magic staff, the Caduceus, he completes the circle by directing his opposite number, Zephyr, to drive away the wintry clouds and make way for spring. (On the philosophical plane, Mercury is dispelling the clouds that veil the intellect so that the light of reason can shine through.)
- Presiding over the entire scene is the meditating and ameliorating figure of the goddess of love. Pico della Mirandola observed that the "unity of Venus is unfolded in the trinity of the three graces." She also reminds us that love is the tie that binds both the picture and the world together.