Vanessa Cai

Flora, Venus, Florence: Reassessing Botticelli’s Primavera

Sandro Botticelli (born March, 1445) in Florence and apprenticed to Fra Fillipo Lippi, was a famous Italian Renaissance painter known for religious paintings, history paintings, portraits, and mythologies. The last are the most famous today, and of these his Primavera (1477-1482) is arguably the best known. In fact, Botticelli’s so-called mythological pictures were mostly painted for leisure-loving Florentines who had inherited wealth which they displayed in their palazzos and villas. These so-called bedroom / villa paintings share similar characteristics of embracing a celebration of royal marriage and love. Among Botticelli’s patrons the Medici family, an Italian banking family and political dynasty in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15^th century, were the most prominent. In fact, a member of the Medici Family commissioned the painting Primavera, which is my main focus in this paper. Nonetheless, despite its fame, the Primavera is a complex painting whose meaning is not entirely clear. Various interpretations and controversies appeared. My paper introduces two of the most prevalent interpretations: discovering the connection between figures and allegorical mythologies, and the connection between the setting and literary sources. Scholars such as Ronald Lightbown and Sharon Gregory however, hold two contrasting interpretations on the Primavera. Gregory refuted the common interpretation of the painting as a celebration of marriage, but proposed the idea of Venus as a symbol of the ideal / courtly love. I argue that the Primavera is not merely a painting of beauty, but also an embodiment of Medici’s political ideals and propaganda through Botticelli’s masterly reworking of mythological elements. Botticelli entwines the ancient and the contemporary through figures’ appearances which conform to the classical beauty, and costumes with embroideries. In general, Botticelli’s ability to portray love at once highly aesthetic and ideal but still alluring way, embodied the values espoused by the Medici in art, literature, and public festivals.  The ethereal beauty and the grace with which he fulfilled this requirement made him one of the greatest artists under Medici’s patronage.