You may recollect that Lois and I are working on an idea to avoid the cultural overload that comes with trying to look at too many painting masterpieces in a short space of time. We call it the ‘One-Stop Uffizi.’
The idea is simple: one of us chooses a picture before we go to the gallery; we enter and walk briskly, glancing neither to left or right, until arrive at the picture we have chosen. Then we spend 10 minutes really looking at the picture. (We will have done some previous research so as well enjoying the artistry, we will know something of the back story.) Then we leave briskly, glancing neither to left nor to right, resisting the temptations as we pass.
We have already tried it out on my favourite painting in the Uffizi: Filippo Lippi’s Lippi’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels. For our second One-Stop visit, Lois took me to see one of the most talked about and controversial painting in the world: Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera. We arrived early in the morning, when there was hardly anyone else there, and spent a wonderful 10 minutes studying the painting overall and in detail.
It is extraordinary, overwhelming, alluring, intriguing, beautiful… but it is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. The mystery is who commissioned it and the enigma is: what on earth does it all mean?
There, on the right is the nymph Chloris, ravished by Zephyrus and transformed into Flora, the goddess of spring, in her flowery dress. In the centre, the goddess of love and beauty, Venus, poses chastely, while above her Cupid fires his arrow of love. To the left dance the Three Graces, minor Greek goddesses symbolising beauty, nature, creativity and fertility. And there’s Mercury on the far left, with his bronze bicycle helmet and his wingéd sandals, gesturing to the sky. Is he dissipating the clouds of winter, heralding the spring?
Botticelli’s Spring (and his nearby Birth of Venus) overpower us, in-your-face acclamations of the Renaissance at its height. Not a saint to be seen, just pagan gods and goddesses, emphasising the new Humanism and its interest in classical literature.
The experts muse about the influences of Ovid and Lucretius, but the most probable inspiration is a poem by the Medici house poet Agnolo (Angelo) Ambrogini, commonly called Poliziano. Botticelli’s classical education (or lack of it) was such that he would have needed help, and Poliziano was on hand to suggest the characters and the composition.
Botticelli’s intense involvement with the painting can be seen not only in the sublime modelling of the figures and the serenity of their faces, but in its passionate attention to detail, notably in the flowers and plants, each meticulously and accurately depicted. Lois tells me there are some 500 plant species in the picture, with about 190 flowers. We step forward to examine them closely and feel connected with Sandro as he made those brushstrokes more than 500 years ago. (Primavera was painted in the late 1470s or early 1480s, nobody knows for sure.)
So, what is it about? Well, certainly about love and peace, nature and abundance, and the burgeoning of spring. The complex symbolism of those flowers suggests that the painting is also about marriage, and that gives us clues to the mystery of who might have commissioned it. Scholars suggest that it commemorates the marriage in 1482 of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a younger cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the heiress Semiramide Appiani. The cornflowers around Flora’s neck are a sign of a woman who is loved, while the orange blossoms symbolise marriage. It’s also suggested that the Three Graces represent the three aspects of love according to Humanist philosophy: chastity, beauty and pleasure. So perhaps Il Magnifico commissioned it for his cousin’s wedding.
All this speculation pales in front of the picture itself, a joyous, knockout celebration of life and art. We leave the gallery uplifted, with no sign of cultural indigestion. We hope you, too, enjoyed our One-Stop visit.
Who’s next? I’ve got my eye (if you see what I mean) on a one-eyed Duke who had his nose deliberately broken. We’ll tell you why in One-Stop 3.