In the late spring of 1967 I visited Florence in Italy, it was several months after the devastating flood that had engulfed Florence in November the previous year. I saw stains like plimsoll lines on the walls of buildings and in the churches I visited, huge dehumidifying machines were drying their interior walls. Life was slowly getting back to
normal.
Having greeted a copy of Michaelangelo’s sculpture of David outside of the Uffizzi Gallery, I went in to look at paintings. I came to Botticelli’s ‘ Spring’ it was exciting to see the original that had been painted nearly five hundred years earlier. Botticelli was a painter working in Florence during the era which has become known as the Renaissance; several schools of painting flourished, situated throughout much of Italy, the Northern and Venetian Schools, the Florentine and Central Schools being the most important, each put an emphasis on different aspects of painting.
The painting ‘Spring’ is an allegory. The work was painted with tempera on panel, tempera consists of ground pigments mixed with egg yolk, honey or glue and water, it is permanent and fast drying. I have experimented with egg tempera mixed with gouache paint, it is more suitable for painting on a panel rather than on canvas, because the paint tends to crack if not kept flat.
The setting for Spring is an orange grove, with plants scattered around, five hundred different varieties and one hundred and ninety different flowers, so I read, a botanical dictionary! Six mythological characters are situated across the space. The work is thought to resemble a Flemish tapestry, popular at the time.
The work was probably commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici for one of his cousins. Lorenzo Medici was an important patron of the Arts and left a lasting legacy of work. Much has been written about the Medici dynasty, mostly unfavourable, but the Arts did flourish during their time in power.
In the painting we see on the left hand side, a male pointing a wand towards the sky, three women are dancing in a circle next to him, in the centre is a female, dressed in a diaphanous white dress, around her is draped a red gown, her gaze is towards the viewer, her figure is framed by an archway of trees, a blind-folded putti is seen holding an arrow, hovering above her, next to her stands, almost floats, another female, her dress is decorated with plant designs and she wears a necklace of flowers. The wind we can see is blowing the flowing dresses from left to right. On the right of the painting we see another female character, also dressed in a diaphanous white gown with a garland of flowers flowing from her mouth and looking down intently at her is the second male figure, he has puffed up cheeks, he clasps her waist, the cold wind if March is now blowing in the opposite direction, I’m not sure what the significance of this change of direction signifies, perhaps the warming of the atmosphere as spring approaches?
There have been several interpretations of this painting, we know that Botticelli was interested in portraying Greek and Roman myths in addition to religious scenes and characters. If we think about the Roman myth, the male on the right would be the god Zephyrus, his cheeks full of wind, the god of wind, Zephyrus marries Chloris, she is shown in the painting with the flowers flowing from her mouth, after they marry Choris becomes the goddess Flora, goddess of flowers, she is next to Chloris. Venus the goddess of Love and Beauty is the central figure, an archetype who can be traced as far back as Paleolithic cave paintings and sculptures. In Helen Benigni’s book The Emergence of the Goddess, she writes ‘Venus appears to be part of what Carl Jung calls the transformative character of the primordial archetype where her image is seen as a regenerative force for change connected to the celestial order.’ To quote Robert Ellis in his book The Integration of Meaning he writes ‘the other way that art might relate more effectively to archetypes is in depicting them as symbolic forms rather than as objects in the world. In western art I find this particularly in the religious and mythological art of the Renaissance.’ To return to the painting, above Venus is Cupid who blindly points his arrow at Chastity, one of the three graces we see dancing in a circle, (the dance of time maybe?) the two other graces are Love and Pleasure. On the left hand side we see the god Mercury, he is pointing his wand to the sky, to brush away the wind, while Chastity looks at him.
Botticelli belonged to the Florentine School of painters, for them form and movement were their main objectives. Botticelli used a paint brush like a pen, his line work gave a feeling of movement, a linear rhythm. He was indifferent to representation, but was intent on presentation. Bernard Berenson wrote, ‘Botticelli was almost as if haunted by the idea of communicationg the unembodied values of touch and movement.’ He may have rivals in the East and Japan writes Berenson, but not in Europe, ‘his work possesses qualities that are life-enhancing and life- communicating, with quivering feeling containing values of touch and values of movement.’
Rober Ellis wites in the chapter The Integration of Meaning, when discussing the integration of visual art ‘ The central conflict within art reflects the tension within meaning in general – between representation and expression.’ Representation was not of primary importance to Botticelli, he was preoccupied with expressing the renewal of life and growth in this work, but he reaches a balance between the two. For Botticelli colour is less important than line, unlike the Venetian painters for example where the use of colour was very important. Berenson thinks that he is the greatest artist of linear design that Europe has ever had. His work went out of favour and was not appreciated again for a long time. He didn’t paint during the last ten years of his life, he died in 1510..