The Joys of Spring: Botticelli’s Primavera
An appropriate time to consider the Renaissance painting that’s a perennial favourite of art lovers…
Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera is among the most famous and analysed paintings of the Renaissance. A beautiful evocation of Spring, it depicts over 500 different plant species and 190 different flowers within its mythical orange grove setting. It is also emblematic of the powerful Medici family of Florentine Bankers that encouraged a different flowering — of Classical Knowledge, of Neoplatonism, energising the development of European arts and science after centuries of domination by the Roman Catholic Church. This was the beginning of the Florentine Renaissance. Without the patronage of the Medici, Botticelli may never have created such paintings and, even if he had, they probably would’ve been destroyed…
Primavera was painted by Botticelli in the early 1480s, on his return from Rome. It was to celebrate the Spring marriage of Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’ de Medici. It also celebrates pagan deities at a time of inquisitions and religious persecution when painting such things could result in excommunication, or even execution.
For centuries prior, art had been restricted to portraits of nobility, saints, or the…
