The Mysteries of a Mythological Masterpiece

The famous La Primavera by Botticelli was commissioned Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Although certainly painted between 1477 and 1482, critics stand divided over the exact date of the work, intended interpretation, and influences. La Primavera’s figures and themes seem to be drawn from a multiplicity of sources results in a hybridity that lends itself to several interpretations, which have become notorious topics of discussion and analysis since the painting’s rediscovery. Many critics found their argument in the idea it was commissioned for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, and conclude it is didactic in nature, meaning to serve as a lesson under a mythological guise on chastity, submission, and procreation for the new bride.

Other historians point to the blossoming garden and the classical understanding that Chloris transforms into Flora, the goddess of spring, after Zephyrus releases her to show the painting is properly interpreted as an allegory about the metamorphosis of spring. Still others propose that Botticelli’s symbolism promoted the Renaissance’s Neo-Platonic ideals of love. In this light, the painting serves to contrast the carnal lust of Zephyrus for Chloris with The Three Graces and Mercury, who allude to a more virtuous order of love. The ambiguity of La Primavera’s meaning is partially due to the strength of its intricate visual elements, like the figures’ expressions and the overwhelming potential for symbolism, which fuse overt icons together in complex relationships. Perhaps, instead of seeing La Primavera’s ambiguity as an obstacle that blocks the modern day viewer from an accurate analysis, it could be recognized as an integral element in its interpretation to show Botticelli fused various inspirations to birth a deliberate hybridity and multiplicity of meaning.

Sandro Botticelli, La Primavera, c. 1477-1482

Tempera on Panel, Uffizi, n. 8360

 Apollonio di Giovanni, The Rape of the Sabine Women, c. 1465

 Tempura on Canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, WA1850.30.

Cassonis, marriage chests from the renaissance in which bridal trousseaus were stored, were often decorated with rape scenes from myths like Persephone, Helen, and most importantly, the Sabine women. This tradition can be traced back to Marco Anotonio Altieri’s (1450-1532) writings, which proposed the rape of the Sabine women to be the origin of marriage and was necessary to insure the survival of Romulus’s settlement. The rape of Chloris by Zephyrus insinuated in La Primavera follows the tradition of instructing the bride to submit to her husband for the sake, stability, and the continuation of the race.

 Sandro Botticelli, Pallas and The Centaur, c. 1482

Tempera on canvas, Uffizi, n. 2010100623

In 1975, Webster Smith published his results of his studies of the Medici possessions and proposed Pallas and The Centaur was located in a room adjoining the nuptial chamber shared by young Lorenzo de’ Medici and his bride on the opposite wall of La Primavera. It is likely this was the bride’s personal room, decorated with art that reminded her of wifely duties. In this case, Pallas would represent the restraint of inappropriate conduct signified by the centaur and the importance of chastity and virtue. 

Sandro Botticelli, The Abyss of Hell, c. 1480

 Colored drawing on parchment, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

This is Botticelli's chart of Hell as described by Dante in his 14th century epic poem Inferno. Dante saw hell as an abyss which circled around Lucifer who was frozen in the center. Painted around the same time as La Primavera, it confirms Botticelli’s experience with Dante, which is suggestive of proposed connections between La Primavera and Dante’s Divine Comedy.

  Alessio Baldovinetti, Annunciation, c. 1457

Tempura on Wood, Uffizi, Inv. 1890: 483

Painted in 1457 for the Salvastrine friars of San Giorgio alla Costa, Baldovinett’s Annunciation depicts the Virgin Mary in the orthodox divine beauty of the time. Botticelli would have been familiar with this Florentine piece and possibly used it as a muse for his central Venus in La Primavera, and radically applied the same ethereal beauty meant to kindle a heavenly fervor, traditionally reserved for religious art, to his secular painting. His evocation that Venus could symbolize divine love strengthens the interpretations that suggest La Primavera’s correlation to Neo-platonic ideals of love.

 Giovanni da Paolo, Dancing Angels, c. 1436, 

Oil and gold on panel, Musée Condé, Chantilly, PE 9

Paolo’s Dancing Angels’ harmonious rhythm and grace kindle a response of sacred respect from the onlooker. This kind of religious imagery, with its deliberate appeal for awe, seems to be a more accurate inspiration for La Primavera’s three graces than the dancing maidens that decorated the walls and coffers of the noble Florentines of Botticelli’s time. His inclusion of older religious imagery and inspiration firms La Primavera’s correlations with ideals of divine love.

Sandro Botticelli, A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, Villa Lemmi Fresco, c. 1484

Fresco transferred to Canvas, Louvre, Paris, RF 322

This fresco by Botticelli was discovered 1873, in the Villa Lemmi, at the foot of the Careggi Hill, close to a villa of Cosimo de Medici, along with Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman. Villa Lemmi belonged to the Tornabuoni family, friends of the Medici family. It is supposed the fresco was made to honor the marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizzi through an allegorical depiction of a young man being led towards female symbols of the seven liberal arts: rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, grammar, geometry, astronomy and music. Botticelli’s deliberate narrative and praise of this humanist spirit seems to be hidden in La Primavera as well. 

Sandro Botticelli, Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman, Villa Lemmi Fresco, c. 1484,

Fresco transferred to Canvas, Louvre, Paris, RF 321 

This fresco, found along with A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, was painted on the occasion of a marriage in the Tornabuoni family, friends of the Medicis. It is speculated to be an allegorical painting, portraying Venus and the Three Graces, symbolizing chastity, beauty, and love, providing strong evidence of the influence that myths and literature had on Botticelli’s works, and the classical Divinities that emerge as his subjects.

-Amelia Hammon