Hello, Dear readers,

In the first piece of this series, we looked at The Birth of Venus. Today we continue with Sandro Botticelli, but we move to a different painting. Many people find this one even richer than The Birth of Venus.

Its name is Primavera. In Italian, it means Spring.

Primavera (c. 1482). Tempera on panel, 202 × 314 cm (80 × 124 in). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Left to right: Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Flora, Chloris, Zephyrus.

Botticelli painted it around 1480. Today it hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, in the same room as The Birth of Venus. Most visitors gather in front of the seashell.

The painting shows a shaded orange grove. Inside it, we see nine figures. The background is dark, almost black, but the painting does not feel dark at all. Botticelli filled the meadow with flowers. Researchers have counted more than 130 different kinds. It is believed that he studied real plant collections of his time to paint them. Because of this, the grove feels alive, like a spring morning in the hills around Florence.

On the right side, we see a figure with pale, almost blue skin. This is Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, the wind that brings spring. We know him from The Birth of Venus. There, he carried the goddess to the shore. Here, he is reaching for a young nymph named Chloris. Her face is frightened, and she is trying to escape.

Then something strange happens. Flowers are coming out of her mouth.

According to the myth, told by the Roman poet Ovid, Zephyrus takes Chloris by force and marries her. After this, she is transformed into Flora, the goddess of spring. Botticelli shows this transformation in a single image. Chloris and Flora stand side by side, but they are the same person. The flowers falling from her lips are the moment of change itself.

Next to her, Flora is calm and smiling. She wears a dress embroidered with flowers and a floral crown, and she scatters roses from her lap. She is spring itself, in human form.

At the center of the painting stands Venus.

At first, it is easy to miss her. She is dressed, quiet, and still. But look at the trees behind her. They open in a soft arch, and the sky appears exactly above her head. This shape recalls the half dome we see behind the Virgin Mary in church paintings. Her raised hand also looks like a gesture of blessing. Botticelli paints a pagan goddess, but he frames her like a Madonna. In his world, mythology and faith live side by side, just as we saw in The Birth of Venus.

Venus is also the only figure who looks directly at us. It is as if she is welcoming us into the garden.

Above her flies Cupid, the god of love, with his bow and arrow. His eyes are covered with a blindfold.

Why? Because love is blind.

His arrow points toward three young women dancing on the left. They are the Three Graces. In Greek mythology, they are sisters: Aglaia, who stands for brightness; Euphrosyne, who stands for joy; and Thalia, who stands for blooming and abundance. They dance in a circle, holding hands, in veils so thin they are almost transparent. Botticelli was famous for his elegant lines, and this skill is clearest here. The veils do not hide the body. But for the thinkers of the Renaissance, this kind of beauty was not earthly. It was a reflection of the beauty of the soul.

At the far left stands Mercury, the messenger of the gods. We recognize him by his winged sandals and his red cloak. With his staff, he pushes the clouds away from the garden.

There are different readings of this gesture. According to one view, this grove is a kind of paradise, and in paradise the sky must always be clear. Another view says that the painting once hung next to another Botticelli work in the Medici palace, and Mercury’s staff was pointing toward it. We do not know for certain. Perhaps both are true.

Like The Birth of Venus, Primavera is connected to the Medici family. It was made for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, most likely for his marriage. He was only nineteen years old. A painting of spring, for a young man in the spring of his life.

The orange trees above the figures carry a quiet message too. The golden fruits recall the mythical garden of the Hesperides, and they also point to the red balls on the coat of arms of the Medici family. In a way, even the trees are signed.

Many art historians also read a deeper idea in the painting. This idea comes from the Neoplatonic philosophy that surrounded Botticelli in Florence.

At that time in Florence, with the support of the Medici family, a school of thought had formed around the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Many artists of the period, including Botticelli, were part of this circle. According to the Neoplatonists, human beings could not understand God through reason and logic. They could come close to Him only through beauty and love. Everything beautiful, a face, a flower, a melody, was a reflection of the divine in this world. For this reason, looking at beauty was, in a way, a form of prayer. And this was the task of art: to make us feel, through what the eye can see, what the eye cannot see.

When we look with this idea in mind, Primavera turns into a song. According to this reading, the whole scene tells a single melody. Love begins on the right, with Zephyrus and Chloris, as passion, in its most earthly form. In the center, with Venus and the Three Graces, it turns into beauty and harmony. The dance of the Graces seems to follow a silent music that can be heard only with the mind. And on the left, with Mercury, it ends in wisdom and peace. From right to left, the painting rises step by step, from the earthly to the divine. Even the curved poses of the figures and the soft flow of the lines follow this rhythm. Some scholars find the composition of the painting almost musical for this reason.

Primavera is one of the most debated paintings in art history, and its interpretations don’t negate each other. Like the flowers in its meadow, they grow side by side.

One last thing.

Every time I look at this painting, I always return to the grass. More than 130 kinds of flowers, painted one by one, in a place where almost no one looks. In the flower language of the Renaissance, many of them carry a wish: the myrtle speaks of faithfulness, the daisy of love returned.

A gift, with a hundred small blessings hidden in the grass.

Maybe that is exactly what spring is.