Spring (Primavera)
Sandro Botticelli (1445 to 1510) · about 1480
Nine figures move across a dark orange grove carpeted with flowers, and nobody has ever fully explained what they are doing. On the right the blue wind god Zephyr seizes the nymph Chloris, who at his touch turns into Flora, the goddess of spring, shown beside her scattering blossoms from her patterned dress. In the centre Venus stands slightly back, calm and fully clothed, with a blindfolded Cupid aiming his arrow above her. To the left the three Graces dance in a ring, and Mercury, in red with winged sandals, reaches up to brush away a cloud with his staff. The scene reads from right to left like a poem about love being tamed into harmony.
Botticelli painted on a large poplar panel and treated every inch as a tapestry. Botanists have identified more than forty plant species in the meadow, from violets and strawberries to cornflowers, all rendered accurately enough to be named. Look at the transparent veils of the Graces, painted with thin whites over the ground so the bodies show through, and at the fine gold lines that trace the rays of light. The oranges above are a Medici emblem, since the family's name was linked to the fruit called mala medica.
The panel was recorded in the fifteenth century in the town house of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, probably made for his marriage. It later moved to the Medici villa at Castello and entered the Uffizi in the nineteenth century, hanging near its companion the Birth of Venus. The pairing lets you compare two moods of the same painter, one airy and cool, the other dense and shadowed. A small memorable detail is Chloris's mouth, from which sprigs of flowers are already emerging as her transformation begins.
Did You Know? Around five hundred distinct plants have been counted in the meadow, painted in such detail that botanists can identify most of them.
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