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Botticelli's Primavera

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is one of the most vigorously debated
works in the history of art.

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Its complex mythology has been intensely
argued about

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ever since critical interest in Botticelli's
work was revived in the 19th century,

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with a countless number of often-conflicting interpretations

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repeatedly imposed upon it.

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There are intricately detailed
Primavera-related theories on love,

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politics, literature, philology,

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botany, and even smell;

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and over the decades

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its figures have been ascribed
to an apparent limitless parade of characters

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from both ancient mythology

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and Botticelli’s contemporary 15th-century
Florentine world.

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And then there's the diverse range
of elaborate philosophical interpretations

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incorporating Platonism, Neoplatonism,

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humanism, naturalism, hedonism,

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and just about any other “ism”
that you could possibly imagine.

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In fact, there's been so much written
about Primavera for so long,

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in so many different ways, that you might
well be forgiven for thinking that

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when it comes right down to it,
we can't actually say anything

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about this remarkable
painting with any conviction whatsoever.

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But happily,

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that turns out not to be the case.

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Because for all the divergently contrasting

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scholarly interpretations
long swirling around us,

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slowly but surely a broad consensus
on the basic structure of Primavera has emerged;

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and the timing has never been better

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to step back and take a fresh, informed
look at this remarkable 15th-century painting

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and come to our own conclusions
about what it's really about

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and what makes it so very special.

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The first thing your attention will be drawn to
when you look at Primavera

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is not the arrangement of its figures

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or their graceful movements,
or the intriguing setting,

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or the remarkable botanical details
scattered throughout,

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or even the maddening question of how to comprehensively
interpret the complex scene you’re presented with

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through the combination of classical mythological references
and contemporary Renaissance values.

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All of that will come later.

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No, the first thing you'll be struck by
when encountering this monumental work,

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even for those who've seen it
many times before, is its sheer size:

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over two meters in height
and more than three meters in width,

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its nine life-sized characters are enfolded

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in the largest panel painting Botticelli ever made,

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eclipsing even its equally famous,
and almost equally-expansive cousin,

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The Birth of Venus.

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This is a painting that commands attention
first and foremost by its overt physicality;

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an overwhelming presence

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that comprehensively dominates any room.

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And the room it was originally designed for,

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we know from a series of detailed inventories

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compiled at the turn of the 16th century,

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was in a residence owned by Lorenzo
di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici,

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a descendant of the cadet branch of the Medici family,

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who, together with his brother Giovanni,

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became wards of their powerful cousin
Lorenzo de’ Medici -

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the long standing de facto
ruler of Florence known as “Il Magnifico” -

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upon the death of their father in 1476.

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As it happens, for well over a century,
the majority of academic theories about Primavera

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had been centered on Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco,

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who was known to have been a frequent patron
of Botticelli throughout his lifetime,

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and who was on record as having been
the first Medici owner of the country villa at Castello,

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a few kilometers northwest of Florence,

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which many decades later
became the sumptuous favorite residence

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of Duke Cosmo I,
the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

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And it was at Castello

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where several 16th-century accounts,

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including one by the famously influential
art historian and artist Giorgio Vasari,

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describe Primavera as being displayed,
along with The Birth of Venus,

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leading some to speculate that the two
works had been thematically connected

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from the very beginning.

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But once scholars started examining
those old inventories in detail in the mid-1970s,

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they discovered that there was a big problem:

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because it turned out that Primavera
wasn't originally located in the villa at Castello after all,

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but rather in Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s
Florentine townhouse,

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while it seems that
he never owned The Birth of Venus at all.

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Both paintings had clearly found their way to Castello
long after his death,

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likely when Duke Cosmo I
had consolidated his power in the region

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and had set up court at Castello.

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And this matters,
because the older theories about Primavera

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didn't just involve Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco,

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they also involved Castello itself.

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It was long known
that he'd purchased the property,

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with the advice
and assistance of Lorenzo Il Magnifico,

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in the late 1470s;

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and over time, most art historians became convinced

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that Primavera was explicitly commissioned
at precisely that time

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as a sort of elaborate housewarming gift
for his new country villa -

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a vivid philosophical-mythological reminder

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to inspire and instruct its 14-year-old master

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by subtly reinforcing the core life values
he’d been repeatedly exposed to

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while growing up in the glittering,
classically-inspired humanist world of his cousin,

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Lorenzo Il Magnifico,

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and his surrounding coterie of leading
poets, philosophers and scholars.

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But that core thesis naturally collapses

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once we realized that Primavera wasn't, in fact,
made for Castello after all.

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It was obvious
that we had to seriously rethink matters.

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We'll return shortly to the fascinating story

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of how we've managed to piece together
the new, compelling explanation

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of when and why Primavera was created
that most art historians now subscribe to.

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But let's first focus our attention on the painting itself

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and those mysterious figures depicted within it;

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because it turns out that, most fortunately,

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after well over a century of intense debate,

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virtually everyone now agrees on who they are.

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We're presented with nine
separate characters

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in a semi-circular, flower-strewn
clearing on a gently rising plane

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in front of an array of orange trees
and other vegetation.

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At first, it seems, based on the way
they're interacting with each other –

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or not interacting, as the case may be –

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that they should be divided
into five distinct groups.

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But we'll soon see that that's not quite
the right way to look at things.

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In fact, it turns out that there aren't
really nine separate characters at all.

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The central figure is Venus,

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the goddess of love, beauty, desire,

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marriage, and fertility,
whose garden this clearly is.

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We know this not only from her commanding,
central, slightly raised location,

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but also from the way
she officially receives us into her domain

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by performing the standard gesture of Renaissance welcoming

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that appears throughout
many artistic works of the time,

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from the woodcut of Jacobus de Cessolis’
allegorical treatise on chess,

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portraying the so-called “innkeeper pawn”,
inviting us to his tavern,

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to Mantegna’s famous meeting scene fresco
in the Ducal Palace in Mantua,

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where Ludovico Gonzaga is shown greeting his returning son,

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who’d just been made a cardinal,

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to a Botticelli fresco depicting
the allegorical figure of Prudentia

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welcoming a young man into the company
of the seven liberal arts.

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The garden itself is filled
with a wide variety of vegetation

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the most immediately conspicuous of which

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are the numerous oranges and orange blossoms looming over
most of the painting's characters.

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Over time, oranges had often come to be identified

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with the golden apples that figured prominently
in many ancient myths

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like the three golden apples that Venus offered Hippomenes
to distract Atalanta

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– who bent down and picked them up –

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and win the race against her.

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And by far the most celebrated
mythological nursery of golden apples

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was Juno's fabled
Garden of the Hesperides,

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where the golden apples were said
to be guarded by both nymphs and a dragon.

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That's where Eris bought her
golden apple of discord

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that gave rise to the Judgment of Paris
and the subsequent Trojan War,

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and where Hercules was sent to steal
three others as his 11th labor.

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All of which explains why many 17th and 18th century
inventories of Primavera

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referred to the painting
as “The Garden of the Hesperides”.

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Venus, meanwhile, is framed by a myrtle tree,

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the sweet-scented plant, which,

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together with the the rose, was her primary symbol;

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and above her flies
her blindfolded, naughty son Cupid,

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who shoots one of his love-inducing arrows

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towards the group of seemingly self-absorbed
dancing women next to Venus.

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These are The Three Graces,

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a trio of enchanting sisters
originally called “The Charities”

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before later being renamed Graces.

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Either way, they vividly represent
the ideals of beauty, youth and elegance,

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and were often shown dancing together,

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attending to Venus.

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Botticelli painted The Three Graces
on at least one other occasion –

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also in the company of Venus,
but not dancing, this time –

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in another of his surviving mythological
frescoes, created years later.

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More generally,

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an ancient Roman statue
of the Three Graces had been discovered

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in the middle of the 15th century
and later moved to Siena,

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where it remains today,

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inspiring a number of Renaissance artists,

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including Raphael, whose own youthful version
of The Three Graces

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involves each one holding an apple,

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leading some to conclude that
they're actually meant to be Hesperides nymphs,

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bringing us back to that famous
garden once more.

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While many allusions to The Three Graces
occur throughout the ancient world,

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one particularly relevant instance for us
is the detailed account

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by the first-century philosopher
and dramatist Seneca,

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describing how their elegant circular
dancing in transparent, flowing gowns

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represents the passing of a benefit
from hand to hand

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that seamlessly returns to the giver –

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an image explicitly, and magnificently,
illustrated by Botticelli,

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with the central Grace shifting to her
left to press her hand against the Grace beside her,

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who passes it on to the Grace on the right

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through their interlocking hands,
held high above their heads;

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who, in turn, returns the benefit
to the upturned palm of the central Grace.

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We know that Seneca's description
of The Three Graces

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was popular in Botticelli's day,

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because it was singled out
by the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti

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as an ideal artistic subject

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in his influential 1435 book On Painting,

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a concrete example of how
literary awareness can stimulate an artist

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to create beautiful images
that fully incorporate Alberti's

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detailed prescription
for gently fluttering clothing:

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“On the side struck by the wind

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the bodies will show a good part of their
naked forms; and on the other side

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the draperies blown by the soft
wind, will flutter through the air.”

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Exactly as Botticelli has done here.

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And then there's the passage
from one of Horace's Odes

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that's naturally drawn
the attention of Botticelli scholars,

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where he implores
Venus to leave her beloved Cyprus

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to come help him
conquer his love interest Glycera,

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before adding, “And bring along
that passionate son of yours,

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and the loose-girdled Graces,
and the nymphs and youth and Mercury too.”

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Aside from the goddess of youth,

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whom many believe was requested,
tongue in cheek, by the aging Horace

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to help him live up to amorous
expectations with the young Glycera,

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Primavera intriguingly contains all the other characters
explicitly invoked in Horace’s Ode:

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Venus,

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Cupid,

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The Three Graces,

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and Mercury

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– as well as a nymph,

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but we'll get to that in a moment.

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The figure of Mercury is easily identifiable by both
the winged boots he wears as a divine messenger,

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and his famous caduceus, a staff entwined with two serpents

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that he's diligently poking into some clouds,

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thereby fulfilling a function
that Virgil ascribes to him in the Aeneid:

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being, “the disperser of clouds
and the tamer of winds”

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a characteristic also highlighted in a statue of Mercury
created several decades earlier

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by Agostino di Duccio,

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where you can see
the wind swirling around his knees.

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Mercury's main job then, it seems,

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is to maintain the perpetually optimal
meteorological conditions in Venus’ garden.

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Meanwhile, he's also equipped with a sword

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that can be used to both prune the surrounding vegetation

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and presumably, if need be,

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assist him in keeping out stray, unwelcome guests.

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So much for the six characters
on the first two thirds of the painting.

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What about the other three?

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Furthest on the right

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we see a grayish winged figure with puffed cheeks

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who's chasing a young woman.

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He is Zephyr, the personification of the West Wind,

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generally regarded as being
the most gentle and favorable of the four;

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but he sure doesn't look gentle here,
as he doggedly pursues the nymph Chloris

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whom he eventually catches and ravishes,

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before officially marrying and elevating her to the position
of Goddess of Flowers and Springtime,

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where she now goes by the name of Flora.

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Which means that the three figures on the right

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aren't actually three figures at all.

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Botticelli has used the device of continuous narration here,

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simultaneously illustrating two separate scenes
from Ovid’s poem Fasti,

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where Chloris explicitly describes her experiences.

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On the extreme right

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is the moment when Zephyr pursues
and eventually catches her.

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While to the left
we see the now-married Flora

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striding purposefully through the scene,

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sprinkling the earth with flowers.

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We'll soon see more evidence

00:15:59.361 --> 00:16:03.498
that Ovid’s Fasti is a principal
literary reference for Primavera.

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But before we do so, it's worth
pointing out that Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

00:16:08.971 --> 00:16:14.243
tells a similar tale of Zephyr, Flora, Venus and Cupid.

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“Spring comes, and Venus's winged courier Cupid runs in front;

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and all along the path that they tread

00:16:23.218 --> 00:16:26.421
Dame Flora carpets the trail of Zephyr

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with a wealth of blossoms,
exquisite in hue and fragrance.”

00:16:33.295 --> 00:16:36.431
Botticelli has inserted numerous visual clues here

00:16:36.431 --> 00:16:40.969
to reinforce the notion that his depiction
of Zephyr, Chloris and Flora

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represent two very different scenes.

00:16:45.307 --> 00:16:48.043
The wind coming from the mouth
of the pursuing Zephyr

00:16:48.043 --> 00:16:51.179
that is blowing Chloris' hair and diaphanous robe

00:16:51.179 --> 00:16:55.517
is coming, unmistakably, from right to left –

00:16:55.984 --> 00:16:57.519
in the opposite direction

00:16:57.519 --> 00:17:01.523
to the one affecting all the other
seven figures on the left;

00:17:01.523 --> 00:17:04.927
clearly signifying
that all seven of these figures

00:17:04.927 --> 00:17:07.930
should be grouped together
in the same garden scene,

00:17:08.430 --> 00:17:11.233
with Zephyr and Chloris only included

00:17:11.233 --> 00:17:15.037
as a way of describing the background
of how it came to pass.

00:17:16.772 --> 00:17:19.942
And then there are the flowers
that emanate from Chloris' mouth

00:17:19.942 --> 00:17:21.977
as she's touched by Zephyr,

00:17:21.977 --> 00:17:25.414
visually marking her transformation
from nymph to goddess

00:17:25.681 --> 00:17:29.051
in a way that unmistakably references
Ovid's Fasti,

00:17:29.051 --> 00:17:34.623
where Flora is described as telling her tale while
breathing forth roses from her mouth.

00:17:35.924 --> 00:17:38.961
Botticelli innovatively combines
Ovid's imagery

00:17:39.127 --> 00:17:43.999
with his own artistic vision, emphasizing
Chloris’ transition into Flora

00:17:44.333 --> 00:17:47.102
by taking those flowers
that flow from her mouth

00:17:47.169 --> 00:17:53.675
— not roses, but a collection of periwinkles, wild
strawberries, cornflowers and anemones —

00:17:54.276 --> 00:17:57.913
and merges them seamlessly into
the flowers on Flora’s dress;

00:17:57.913 --> 00:17:59.715
which, in turn,

00:17:59.715 --> 00:18:05.520
are then magically transformed into real flowers that she sprinkles
onto the meadow below —

00:18:05.520 --> 00:18:10.492
her own way of generously painting the earth
with the signs of spring.

00:18:12.394 --> 00:18:16.264
A final touch to emphasize the distinctiveness
between the two scenes

00:18:16.264 --> 00:18:18.834
occurs through the orange trees in the garden,

00:18:19.234 --> 00:18:21.903
which only start flowering
and producing fruit

00:18:21.903 --> 00:18:26.341
at precisely the point where Chloris begins
her metamorphosis into Flora,

00:18:27.109 --> 00:18:30.612
once more demarcating two very different scenarios:

00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:34.549
one of lustful pursuit and sexual violence,

00:18:34.549 --> 00:18:39.821
and another of joyous frolicking
in the divine garden of perpetual springtime.

00:18:47.162 --> 00:18:50.999
Now that we have a clear sense of who
all the characters in Primavera are,

00:18:51.767 --> 00:18:54.136
it's time to reconsider the broader issue

00:18:54.136 --> 00:19:00.108
of why Botticelli opted to paint this particular combination
of figures in this particular way.

00:19:01.243 --> 00:19:04.246
What were the key messages
he was trying to convey?

00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:10.285
What, in short, is the overarching meaning
behind this remarkable painting?

00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:13.622
And in order to address that,

00:19:13.622 --> 00:19:17.459
it's essential to first
get a handle on the historical context.

00:19:18.293 --> 00:19:20.762
When did he paint it, exactly?

00:19:20.762 --> 00:19:22.998
And for whom?

00:19:22.998 --> 00:19:26.268
We saw earlier
how for many years, the predominant theory

00:19:26.268 --> 00:19:29.137
was that Primavera was created
to honor the occasion

00:19:29.137 --> 00:19:34.009
of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici
coming into possession of Villa Castello,

00:19:34.443 --> 00:19:37.646
an event that can be traced back to 1477 or so,

00:19:38.146 --> 00:19:41.817
which threw a long shadow
over the proposed dating of the painting.

00:19:42.918 --> 00:19:44.553
But once it became clear,

00:19:44.553 --> 00:19:47.689
through a detailed investigation of past inventories,

00:19:47.789 --> 00:19:51.426
that the painting wasn't originally created for Castello at all,

00:19:52.260 --> 00:19:54.830
many art historians started afresh

00:19:54.830 --> 00:19:59.267
to reconsider, on stylistic grounds,
when Primavera might have been painted.

00:20:01.103 --> 00:20:03.505
Fortunately, there was a major event

00:20:03.505 --> 00:20:06.508
in Botticelli's career that we can date precisely.

00:20:07.109 --> 00:20:12.314
We know that he was in Rome
during the years 1481 and 1482,

00:20:12.314 --> 00:20:15.317
working on frescoes in the Sistine Chapel,

00:20:15.350 --> 00:20:18.620
when he also likely painted
an Adoration of the Magi,

00:20:18.687 --> 00:20:21.690
now in Washington's
National Gallery of Art;

00:20:21.823 --> 00:20:25.093
and that one of the last works he did
before arriving in Rome

00:20:25.093 --> 00:20:31.066
was a large fresco of the Annunciation for the Florentine
Hospital of San Martino alla Scala,

00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:33.668
now in the Uffizi Gallery.

00:20:34.136 --> 00:20:36.838
A close examination of these works,

00:20:36.838 --> 00:20:40.208
all of which were created in the early 1480s,

00:20:40.208 --> 00:20:43.745
reveal many stylistic similarities with Primavera:

00:20:44.579 --> 00:20:48.650
from the hovering Archangel Gabriel
in the San Martino Annunciation,

00:20:48.650 --> 00:20:52.087
who shares many attributes
with Primavera’s Zephyr,

00:20:53.355 --> 00:20:55.157
to the distinctly rounded figures

00:20:55.157 --> 00:20:58.960
and prominent meadow in the foreground
of the Washington Adoration,

00:20:59.594 --> 00:21:03.098
and its logically more embellished
counterpart in Primavera,

00:21:04.499 --> 00:21:10.038
to the strong resemblances between the famous
daughters of Jethro in The Youth of Moses

00:21:10.038 --> 00:21:13.008
and Primavera’s  Three Graces,

00:21:13.008 --> 00:21:18.647
to the innovative spatial arrangement
utilized in The Conturbation of the Laws of Moses,

00:21:18.647 --> 00:21:22.284
featuring three distinct scenes
to be read from right to left

00:21:22.551 --> 00:21:25.954
in a manner strongly
resembling the two of Primavera.

00:21:27.055 --> 00:21:31.526
Not to mention the striking resemblance
between stylistic aspects of Primavera

00:21:31.960 --> 00:21:35.463
and one of Botticelli's
most captivating surviving sketches,

00:21:35.797 --> 00:21:40.802
an Allegory of Abundance,
also dated to the early 1480s.

00:21:42.103 --> 00:21:47.209
Perhaps even more significantly,
there are several highly suggestive corresondences

00:21:47.209 --> 00:21:50.478
between the poses of Flora
and Venus in Primavera

00:21:51.313 --> 00:21:54.916
and a number of statues in Rome's
del Bufalo gardens

00:21:54.916 --> 00:22:00.989
that Botticelli could only have seen during his stay
in the Eternal City in the early 1480s.

00:22:02.457 --> 00:22:05.026
So there are many good stylistic reasons

00:22:05.026 --> 00:22:09.798
to conclude that Primavera
was actually created around 1482 or so.

00:22:10.732 --> 00:22:13.001
And while it might not sound
like such a big deal

00:22:13.001 --> 00:22:19.574
to move our proposed dating of a Renaissance
painting a few years from 1477 to 1482,

00:22:20.408 --> 00:22:22.611
it turns out that in this case,

00:22:22.611 --> 00:22:26.181
doing so makes a world of difference
to interpreting its meaning.

00:22:26.948 --> 00:22:31.820
Because 1482 was the year
that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici

00:22:31.820 --> 00:22:35.123
got married to a woman
named Semiramide Appiani

00:22:35.657 --> 00:22:38.627
after years of careful
planning and negotiation

00:22:38.627 --> 00:22:41.796
by his powerful cousin
Lorenzo Il Magnifico,

00:22:43.131 --> 00:22:46.368
and it seems quite reasonable
to suppose that Botticelli,

00:22:46.968 --> 00:22:51.039
an artist who'd long established himself
as the Medici's favorite painter,

00:22:51.640 --> 00:22:52.707
would have been called upon

00:22:52.707 --> 00:22:56.711
to create his most sophisticated
and physically imposing work yet

00:22:57.078 --> 00:23:01.950
to celebrate the marriage of a key member
of Florence's most illustrious family

00:23:02.384 --> 00:23:07.355
with the sister of the influential
Lord of Piombino – whose niece, incidentally,

00:23:07.756 --> 00:23:11.026
was the stunning beauty
Simonetta Vespucci,

00:23:11.293 --> 00:23:16.264
the publicly proclaimed courtly love
interest of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s brother Giuliano

00:23:16.264 --> 00:23:19.267
during a 1475 jousting tournament,

00:23:19.267 --> 00:23:25.573
for which Botticelli had once created a celebrated,
now-lost, banner depicting her magnificence.

00:23:26.975 --> 00:23:30.278
Well, that's all very suggestive,
you might think,

00:23:30.278 --> 00:23:32.547
but certainly pretty speculative

00:23:32.547 --> 00:23:35.083
if the entire argument is based solely

00:23:35.083 --> 00:23:38.253
on some stylistic re-attribution
of a painting's dating

00:23:38.753 --> 00:23:42.624
that simply happens to correspond
to an established Medici marriage.

00:23:43.525 --> 00:23:46.361
But it turns out that there's
a lot more evidence

00:23:46.361 --> 00:23:51.232
to support the idea that Primavera
was, indeed, specifically created

00:23:51.232 --> 00:23:55.837
as part of an elaborate wedding gift
to celebrate the 1482 marriage

00:23:55.837 --> 00:24:00.041
between Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco
and Semiramide Appiani.

00:24:01.276 --> 00:24:03.912
You just have to know where to look.

00:24:10.785 --> 00:24:13.788
Perhaps the most compelling evidence
for the wedding theory

00:24:14.155 --> 00:24:17.525
can be found in those revealing
inventories we mentioned earlier,

00:24:18.259 --> 00:24:21.863
because it turns out that they detail
much more than just which one of

00:24:21.863 --> 00:24:26.267
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's many different properties
Primavera was located in.

00:24:26.868 --> 00:24:29.871
They also tell us
that the painting had a white frame

00:24:30.205 --> 00:24:33.441
and hung over a lettuccio, or day bed,

00:24:33.942 --> 00:24:37.078
a premium item of furniture
covered with a mattress,

00:24:37.312 --> 00:24:41.216
where members of noble Florentine
families could lie down during the day.

00:24:42.384 --> 00:24:47.088
Now, it bears mentioning
that this lettuccio was particularly wide,

00:24:47.522 --> 00:24:50.859
and its width, recorded as five
and a half braccia,

00:24:51.459 --> 00:24:54.829
correspond pretty well exactly
to what Primavera,

00:24:54.829 --> 00:24:58.800
with its white frame,
must have been: roughly 3.2m.

00:24:59.567 --> 00:25:01.202
Which is highly significant,

00:25:01.202 --> 00:25:04.739
because we know that the union of furniture
and matching artwork

00:25:04.739 --> 00:25:09.644
was highly popular with elite families in late 15th-century Italy,

00:25:09.644 --> 00:25:15.250
with the Medici themselves owning several such combinations
throughout their many properties.

00:25:16.484 --> 00:25:20.288
It seems, then, that Primavera
and the lettuccio below it

00:25:20.288 --> 00:25:24.392
formed one comprehensive unit
of decorative furniture,

00:25:25.193 --> 00:25:28.563
with the painting placed slightly
above eye-level to the viewer,

00:25:28.563 --> 00:25:33.268
fully in keeping with the
perspectivist device of a gently rising plane

00:25:33.268 --> 00:25:36.404
on which we've seen its figures are distributed.

00:25:38.540 --> 00:25:42.410
And we also know that a primary occasion
for the creation

00:25:42.410 --> 00:25:46.781
and installation of such elaborate home
furnishings was a wedding,

00:25:47.682 --> 00:25:54.656
incorporating vividly decorated trousseau chests called cassone,
whose primary accompanying artwork

00:25:54.656 --> 00:25:58.126
is characterized by its long width
and relatively short height,

00:25:59.327 --> 00:26:02.931
as well as specifically designated
paintings called spalliere,

00:26:03.531 --> 00:26:06.534
after the Italian word “spalla”
for shoulder,

00:26:06.734 --> 00:26:09.938
since they were designed to be hung
at shoulder height or above,

00:26:11.105 --> 00:26:14.108
either inset in a piece of custom-made furniture,

00:26:14.108 --> 00:26:15.944
such as a lettuccio,

00:26:15.944 --> 00:26:20.982
or prominently placed higher up on
a specially-paneled area on a wall.

00:26:22.517 --> 00:26:26.654
Botticelli and his workshop were known
to have created several such wedding gifts,

00:26:26.654 --> 00:26:30.492
like the series of four paintings
illustrating Boccaccio's story

00:26:30.492 --> 00:26:33.862
of Nastagio degli Onesti, for the 1483 wedding

00:26:33.862 --> 00:26:36.831
of another staunchly
pro Medici noble family.

00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:40.902
While it's generally believed
that the Allegory of Fertility

00:26:41.169 --> 00:26:44.172
and great mythological work of Venus and Mars,

00:26:44.539 --> 00:26:47.675
both of which share a particularly distinctive size,

00:26:47.675 --> 00:26:50.311
with their width substantially greater than their height,

00:26:50.311 --> 00:26:53.548
were also created
as spalliere for a wedding.

00:26:55.583 --> 00:26:56.551
Meanwhile,

00:26:56.551 --> 00:27:00.021
the two mythological frescoes
by Botticelli mentioned earlier

00:27:00.355 --> 00:27:03.358
are also believed
to have been produced for a marriage –

00:27:03.591 --> 00:27:07.161
the second one,
as it happens, of Lorenzo Tornabuoni,

00:27:07.729 --> 00:27:10.031
another strong Medici ally.

00:27:10.899 --> 00:27:12.000
In short,

00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:15.270
Botticelli was no stranger
to creating a diverse array

00:27:15.270 --> 00:27:19.374
of classical mythological scenes
to commemorate key marriages

00:27:19.374 --> 00:27:22.377
of noble families
in the Medici inner circle.

00:27:23.845 --> 00:27:26.848
So much for the surrounding
historical context.

00:27:27.081 --> 00:27:29.684
What about the painting itself?

00:27:29.684 --> 00:27:34.489
In what ways does Primavera contain
explicit or implicit references

00:27:34.789 --> 00:27:38.026
to Lorenzo's 1482
marriage to Semiramide?

00:27:39.027 --> 00:27:41.229
Well, to modern audiences,

00:27:41.229 --> 00:27:44.299
this represents a particularly large
stumbling block,

00:27:44.799 --> 00:27:50.104
given that you might well be wondering
why exactly a complex mythological collage

00:27:50.104 --> 00:27:53.808
that features a rape scene
would be appropriate for a wedding gift.

00:27:55.076 --> 00:28:00.481
And the usual answer to this question –
that Renaissance values are a far cry from our own –

00:28:00.481 --> 00:28:05.553
is both true
and not, in itself, terribly enlightening.

00:28:07.155 --> 00:28:09.457
A better way to look at the situation

00:28:09.457 --> 00:28:14.128
is to try to understand how to interpret
the meaning of the Zephyr and Chloris myth,

00:28:14.128 --> 00:28:17.031
as well as the many others
present in the painting,

00:28:17.031 --> 00:28:20.034
in the context of those Renaissance values;

00:28:20.668 --> 00:28:25.640
in particular, how those involved
in the commissioning and reception of this painting

00:28:25.640 --> 00:28:28.776
would have viewed the art of marriage in the first place.

00:28:29.777 --> 00:28:33.214
Because it's worth emphasizing
that, while Renaissance marriages

00:28:33.214 --> 00:28:36.384
occasionally involve a couple deeply
in love with each other,

00:28:37.552 --> 00:28:41.389
more often than not,
particularly among the higher classes,

00:28:41.990 --> 00:28:47.495
marriage was regarded as the primary instrument
of forming essential family alliances

00:28:47.495 --> 00:28:49.397
and therefore far too important

00:28:49.397 --> 00:28:53.568
to be left up to the whimsical personal
inclinations of the participants.

00:28:54.836 --> 00:28:57.839
It was much more
like a formal social merger,

00:28:58.106 --> 00:29:02.343
a publicly sanctified agreement
that was part financial exchange -

00:29:02.810 --> 00:29:05.847
through painstakingly negotiated bridal dowries -

00:29:05.847 --> 00:29:07.982
and part status leveraging,

00:29:08.683 --> 00:29:12.654
designed to tangibly cement two extended family groups

00:29:12.654 --> 00:29:14.656
through the production of future offspring.

00:29:16.157 --> 00:29:17.692
More broadly still,

00:29:17.692 --> 00:29:21.562
the act of marriage
was universally recognized, like religion,

00:29:21.929 --> 00:29:25.199
to be a strongly civilizing influence
on society,

00:29:25.967 --> 00:29:28.302
an institution that played a key role in

00:29:28.302 --> 00:29:31.806
channeling our more barbarous
and self-destructive instincts

00:29:32.473 --> 00:29:35.643
into an ordered structure
of loyalties and affections

00:29:36.077 --> 00:29:39.047
that would allow the state
to prosper and flourish.

00:29:40.515 --> 00:29:43.184
As such, a Renaissance wedding,

00:29:43.184 --> 00:29:45.586
particularly among leading families,

00:29:45.586 --> 00:29:51.325
involved a straightforward recognition
of the conjugal responsibility of both parties

00:29:51.325 --> 00:29:54.295
to duly bring about its overarching aim:

00:29:54.295 --> 00:29:59.400
the creation of children to carry on the family line.

00:30:00.034 --> 00:30:03.538
All of which can be explicitly seen
in Primavera,

00:30:04.605 --> 00:30:08.342
starting with the image of Venus
welcoming us into her divine garden.

00:30:09.944 --> 00:30:13.314
Venus, as we know, is the goddess of love,

00:30:13.614 --> 00:30:16.617
beauty, sex and marriage.

00:30:17.351 --> 00:30:19.253
But as we also know,

00:30:19.253 --> 00:30:22.490
each of these attributes can be
significantly different from the other,

00:30:23.157 --> 00:30:26.027
with many celebrated images of Venus

00:30:26.027 --> 00:30:29.130
clearly focusing on her lust-inducing abilities.

00:30:30.331 --> 00:30:32.100
But in Primavera,

00:30:32.100 --> 00:30:37.872
Botticelli explicitly portrays Venus
as a decorous, if obviously beautiful,

00:30:37.872 --> 00:30:40.041
richly attired woman,

00:30:40.041 --> 00:30:43.044
much more matron than sultry temptress,

00:30:43.277 --> 00:30:46.247
with her carefully constructed
headdress and veil,

00:30:46.380 --> 00:30:49.383
elegant jewelry, appropriate footwear,

00:30:49.817 --> 00:30:53.121
and large, flowing, double-sided,
pearl-adorned cloak,

00:30:53.988 --> 00:30:58.226
her belly casually thrust forward
in a pose strongly resonating

00:30:58.226 --> 00:31:01.896
with 15th-century Florentine
notions of stately female beauty

00:31:02.530 --> 00:31:05.533
and echoed in Flora's own walk.

00:31:07.034 --> 00:31:09.237
The Three Graces who accompany her

00:31:09.237 --> 00:31:13.941
are certainly dressed more provocatively
with their sheer, flowing robes,

00:31:14.509 --> 00:31:18.246
but they are nonetheless not, notably, naked

00:31:18.246 --> 00:31:20.581
– a point we'll return to later –

00:31:20.581 --> 00:31:22.650
and can certainly be regarded

00:31:22.650 --> 00:31:25.653
as reflecting the virgin
purity of the bride.

00:31:26.654 --> 00:31:31.425
Indeed, The Three Graces was often
an image associated with Renaissance weddings,

00:31:31.425 --> 00:31:35.263
as can be seen, for example,
by a commemorative medal

00:31:35.263 --> 00:31:41.002
marking the 1486 marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
and Giovanna degli Albizzi,

00:31:41.969 --> 00:31:44.672
with the portrait of Giovanna on one side

00:31:44.672 --> 00:31:47.809
and The Three Graces on the other.

00:31:48.209 --> 00:31:51.546
As you might expect,
there are also several important

00:31:51.546 --> 00:31:54.682
classical literary references
for the Renaissance tradition

00:31:54.682 --> 00:31:57.785
of associating The Three Graces
with weddings.

00:31:58.786 --> 00:32:03.524
In the Iliad, Homer describes
how one of the Graces, whom he calls Pasithea,

00:32:04.192 --> 00:32:07.762
later becomes the wife to Hypnos,
the god of sleep -

00:32:08.596 --> 00:32:13.034
a development Botticelli is perhaps
alluding to by having one of the Graces

00:32:13.034 --> 00:32:17.905
be on the receiving end of Cupid's fiery
arrow as a prelude to her future marriage.

00:32:19.140 --> 00:32:22.977
While in Plutarch's essay offering advice
to a young married couple,

00:32:23.878 --> 00:32:26.113
he cites how the ancients often grouped

00:32:26.113 --> 00:32:31.018
Mercury, Venus and The Graces together
to explicitly demonstrate

00:32:31.018 --> 00:32:35.790
how married couples should attain
their mutual desires by eloquence and understanding,

00:32:35.790 --> 00:32:37.859
rather than stubborn quarreling.

00:32:39.160 --> 00:32:40.895
And it’s worth pointing out here

00:32:40.895 --> 00:32:44.332
that in another version of Giovanna degli Albizzi’s medal

00:32:44.332 --> 00:32:46.467
she's portrayed as Venus.

00:32:47.468 --> 00:32:50.171
While on the flip side of the groom's medal

00:32:50.171 --> 00:32:53.174
he's represented as Mercury.

00:32:54.342 --> 00:32:57.111
Meanwhile, Flora, Zephyr's wife,

00:32:57.111 --> 00:33:00.114
has clearly put their initial encounter
behind her

00:33:00.514 --> 00:33:04.018
and is relishing her married state
as the goddess of flowers.

00:33:05.419 --> 00:33:09.891
In Ovid’s Fasti mentioned earlier, she tells us that:

00:33:09.891 --> 00:33:14.362
“Zephyr made amends for his violence
by giving me the name of wife

00:33:14.362 --> 00:33:17.999
and in my married state,
I have no ground for complaint.

00:33:18.699 --> 00:33:21.235
I enjoy perpetual spring,

00:33:21.235 --> 00:33:24.372
a fruitful garden in the fields of my dowry is mine;

00:33:24.839 --> 00:33:26.841
and my husband says to me,

00:33:26.841 --> 00:33:30.745
‘Goddess, rule the empire of the flowers.’”

00:33:31.345 --> 00:33:35.583
Flora's happiness is further conveyed
through her unique, open-mouthed smile

00:33:35.716 --> 00:33:38.719
that shows the top layer of her white
even teeth,

00:33:39.420 --> 00:33:43.024
a highly distinctive image
that resonates strongly with contemporary

00:33:43.024 --> 00:33:48.195
notions of ideal female beauty prevalent
in Lorenzo de’ Medici's inner circle.

00:33:49.530 --> 00:33:50.698
Given all of this,

00:33:50.698 --> 00:33:53.834
it's unsurprising that many have concluded that Flora

00:33:53.834 --> 00:33:57.838
isn't simply imitating Venus's
fashionable belly thrusting pose:

00:33:58.539 --> 00:34:00.708
she's actually pregnant –

00:34:00.708 --> 00:34:06.547
an obvious visual example
to reinforce the new bride's core matrimonial duties.

00:34:09.083 --> 00:34:13.287
Earlier, we noted that
the fact that the orange trees above the central characters

00:34:13.287 --> 00:34:17.858
were only blooming and producing fruit
from the point where Chloris was touched by Zephyr

00:34:17.858 --> 00:34:21.295
was one of several technical devices Botticelli used

00:34:21.295 --> 00:34:25.232
to temporally separate that scene
from the central one in the garden.

00:34:26.100 --> 00:34:29.103
But looked at from the perspective
of a marriage celebration

00:34:29.537 --> 00:34:32.139
it serves another purpose too:

00:34:32.139 --> 00:34:35.576
with the flowering orange trees
clearly symbolizing the intended

00:34:35.576 --> 00:34:39.947
offspring of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and Semiramide Appiani.

00:34:41.082 --> 00:34:45.987
Indeed, oranges - long called “medical apples”
for their health benefits -

00:34:45.987 --> 00:34:49.190
were often directly associated
with the Medici family,

00:34:49.757 --> 00:34:52.460
with the balls on the famous Medici coat of arms

00:34:52.460 --> 00:34:55.529
sometimes believed to
have been originally oranges.

00:34:56.897 --> 00:35:00.534
And then, there's
the subtle but highly significant point

00:35:00.601 --> 00:35:04.905
that the oranges and orange blossoms
so prominently displayed in Primavera

00:35:05.473 --> 00:35:08.909
are the only type of vegetation
shown in the entire painting

00:35:09.176 --> 00:35:12.179
that blooms beyond springtime.

00:35:13.180 --> 00:35:16.384
A close examination
reveals that the figure of Zephyr

00:35:16.384 --> 00:35:20.855
making his dramatic entrance on the
n right hand side of the painting in pursuit of Chloris

00:35:20.855 --> 00:35:24.358
is not actually underneath orange trees at all,

00:35:24.925 --> 00:35:27.495
but rather bay laurel trees –

00:35:27.495 --> 00:35:29.897
“Laurus nobilis” in Latin –

00:35:29.897 --> 00:35:35.236
and thus likely an explicit
reference to the groom, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.

00:35:36.570 --> 00:35:39.607
Finally, there's the bride, Semiramide,

00:35:40.474 --> 00:35:44.278
the holder of a particularly unusual name
that carries with it

00:35:44.278 --> 00:35:49.083
natural references to the quasi-mythical Babylonian queen Semiramis,

00:35:49.583 --> 00:35:53.387
often credited with the creation of another famous green space:

00:35:53.387 --> 00:35:55.489
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

00:35:56.690 --> 00:35:58.392
And if you look closely,

00:35:58.392 --> 00:36:02.229
Primavera’s Venus wears a crescent moon
shaped pendant

00:36:02.229 --> 00:36:07.568
that many believe explicitly invokes Semiramis’ status
as Queen of the Orient.

00:36:08.803 --> 00:36:11.806
In fact, several scholars have gone even further,

00:36:12.006 --> 00:36:16.577
speculating that Venus and Mercury,
the two major deities of the painting,

00:36:16.577 --> 00:36:19.280
each sporting attention-grabbing
red clothing,

00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:26.153
are in fact nothing less than direct depictions
of the actual Semiramide and Lorenzo.

00:36:27.054 --> 00:36:29.390
Well, perhaps,

00:36:29.390 --> 00:36:32.626
but at the very least,
given all the evidence,

00:36:32.626 --> 00:36:37.098
we can now be quite confident that Primavera
was created for their wedding.

00:36:44.605 --> 00:36:49.944
We now have a solid understanding of the
basic mythological setting underlying Primavera

00:36:49.944 --> 00:36:53.080
and are quite confident that Botticelli created it

00:36:53.080 --> 00:36:59.220
for the 1482 marriage between
Semiramide Appiani and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici,

00:37:00.754 --> 00:37:03.057
But what we haven't yet touched upon,

00:37:03.057 --> 00:37:06.327
and what is perhaps most intriguing
and impressive of all,

00:37:06.861 --> 00:37:08.462
is Botticelli's uniquely

00:37:08.462 --> 00:37:11.765
innovative spirit
that drove the creation of this painting,

00:37:12.433 --> 00:37:15.936
how it boldly set a new standard
for artistic accomplishment,

00:37:16.370 --> 00:37:19.673
strongly in keeping with the dynamic humanist circle

00:37:19.673 --> 00:37:22.743
of Lorenzo de’ Medici's late 15th century Florence.

00:37:25.012 --> 00:37:28.849
What Botticelli was doing in Primavera, in other words,

00:37:28.849 --> 00:37:33.354
and his other great mythological works during the 1480s,

00:37:33.354 --> 00:37:37.591
wasn't simply representing an established classical myth –

00:37:37.591 --> 00:37:43.397
a fairly well-established practice that was
steadily gaining in popularity throughout the 15th century.

00:37:45.199 --> 00:37:50.771
No,  what he was involved with was something very different
and genuinely innovative:

00:37:51.338 --> 00:37:54.742
He was creating, in true Renaissance fashion,

00:37:54.742 --> 00:38:00.848
entirely new artistic ideas
based on a diverse range of classical themes,

00:38:01.382 --> 00:38:04.652
sewing them together in his own unique way

00:38:04.652 --> 00:38:09.490
to invent the visual equivalent of the classically-inspired
Renaissance poetry

00:38:09.990 --> 00:38:14.228
that was so much in vogue in his heady
world of contemporary Florence.

00:38:15.629 --> 00:38:19.667
Which is why, as we've seen,
there are so many different,

00:38:19.667 --> 00:38:24.371
distinctly identifiable classical sources
associated with Primavera:

00:38:25.406 --> 00:38:26.574
from Ovid

00:38:26.574 --> 00:38:27.975
to Seneca

00:38:27.975 --> 00:38:29.443
to Horace

00:38:29.443 --> 00:38:30.678
to Virgil

00:38:30.678 --> 00:38:33.280
to Lucretius and more.

00:38:34.348 --> 00:38:37.851
Just like we would expect from a Renaissance humanist poet.

00:38:39.320 --> 00:38:41.822
This way of looking at Botticelli,

00:38:41.822 --> 00:38:43.557
as a sort of visual poet,

00:38:43.557 --> 00:38:47.962
actively participating in the prevailing Renaissance
humanist culture of his time,

00:38:48.729 --> 00:38:51.332
not only gives us a far deeper
appreciation

00:38:51.332 --> 00:38:54.835
of what was going through his mind
when producing a work like Primavera.

00:38:55.736 --> 00:38:59.273
It also orients us towards seeking out
the many references

00:38:59.273 --> 00:39:04.878
to his contemporary late 15th century Florentine world
that naturally lie buried within it.

00:39:06.046 --> 00:39:09.049
Because they too, of course, exist.

00:39:09.049 --> 00:39:11.452
How could they not?

00:39:11.452 --> 00:39:14.421
But before we turn to exploring those,

00:39:14.421 --> 00:39:17.424
we must tackle another key issue.

00:39:17.524 --> 00:39:20.527
If Botticelli was behaving
like a visual poet,

00:39:20.861 --> 00:39:23.831
if he was occupying himself
with weaving together

00:39:23.831 --> 00:39:27.868
a vast number of different
classical notions into one coherent whole,

00:39:28.669 --> 00:39:33.974
why did he choose those particular ancient Greek and Roman literary fragments and concepts?

00:39:34.608 --> 00:39:35.576
What links them?

00:39:36.810 --> 00:39:40.481
Well, different people
will naturally have different views.

00:39:40.481 --> 00:39:43.751
And when it comes to Primavera,
there always seems to be

00:39:43.751 --> 00:39:46.754
a particular wide spectrum of opinions.

00:39:47.755 --> 00:39:52.226
But for me at least, I'm persuaded
by the arguments that the Botticelli scholar

00:39:52.226 --> 00:39:55.129
Charles Dempsey
makes in his book on Primavera,

00:39:55.896 --> 00:40:00.467
where he states that the core theme
unifying all of its mythological references

00:40:00.467 --> 00:40:04.104
is that of the springtime
deities of the archaic farmer

00:40:04.705 --> 00:40:07.708
presented in a conspicuously pageant-like format

00:40:08.008 --> 00:40:12.246
that would strongly resonate
with a late 15th-century Florentine audience.

00:40:14.048 --> 00:40:17.584
That is why the choice of the primary classical influences

00:40:18.485 --> 00:40:20.621
from Ovid's Fasti

00:40:20.621 --> 00:40:23.624
to Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

00:40:24.024 --> 00:40:26.560
to Seneca's De Beneficiis,

00:40:26.560 --> 00:40:31.865
are all jointly oriented towards highlighting
aspects of a golden pastoral past.

00:40:32.966 --> 00:40:37.404
That is why, above all else, Mercury is involved.

00:40:37.971 --> 00:40:44.044
Because Mercury was long associated
with the month of May in the old Roman rustic calendar,

00:40:44.044 --> 00:40:47.614
presiding over the sowing of seeds
that are blown by the wind

00:40:47.614 --> 00:40:53.687
exactly as Botticelli details, with those swirling
around his right foot in Primavera.

00:40:54.822 --> 00:41:00.294
That is why, too, The Three Graces are clothed,
albeit slightly,

00:41:01.095 --> 00:41:03.397
as explicitly described by Seneca,

00:41:03.397 --> 00:41:07.835
referencing their ancient status
as goddesses of the Earth's fruitfulness.

00:41:08.902 --> 00:41:15.008
After all, the second century geographer Pausanias
specifically declared that:

00:41:15.008 --> 00:41:20.814
“In the earlier period, sculptors and painters alike
represented The Graces draped,

00:41:21.348 --> 00:41:24.351
while today they're shown naked.”

00:41:26.520 --> 00:41:29.523
And that is why, perhaps most of all,

00:41:30.090 --> 00:41:34.795
Venus appears as a far cry from
the sultry goddess of love and desire

00:41:34.795 --> 00:41:38.098
that we see in Botticelli's
Venus and Mars and The Birth of Venus,

00:41:38.766 --> 00:41:41.769
also likely created as wedding gifts,

00:41:41.902 --> 00:41:46.106
but is instead presented to us
as the so-called Venus Genetrix,

00:41:46.673 --> 00:41:49.676
the ancient goddess of motherhood
and domesticity

00:41:49.743 --> 00:41:52.846
as found in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura,

00:41:53.781 --> 00:41:58.285
thereby fitting perfectly within
the context of an archaic pastoral scene

00:41:58.919 --> 00:42:02.790
with Venus, the ancient
garden goddess of nature's fertility,

00:42:03.357 --> 00:42:10.731
who, together with Cupid, Mercury, The Three Graces, Flora and Zephyr,

00:42:10.731 --> 00:42:14.501
depict, as Dempsey memorably expresses it,

00:42:14.501 --> 00:42:19.106
springtime in the first shining days of the world.

00:42:29.216 --> 00:42:33.654
Primavera, like the other landmark
mythological paintings of Botticelli,

00:42:34.188 --> 00:42:39.526
was created in the exceptionally vibrant
humanist world of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence.

00:42:40.394 --> 00:42:43.163
And there's long been much debate
about whether Botticelli

00:42:43.163 --> 00:42:46.366
was an independent,
active participant in this world

00:42:47.034 --> 00:42:50.037
or simply a sort of artistic vessel,

00:42:50.137 --> 00:42:55.742
a technically-gifted visual translator
hired to implement some preordained program

00:42:55.742 --> 00:42:59.213
developed by his more intellectually-sophisticated betters.

00:43:00.647 --> 00:43:02.282
For me, at least,

00:43:02.282 --> 00:43:05.552
I'm convinced
that Botticelli was very much his own man.

00:43:06.753 --> 00:43:10.224
You see it in his unabashedly
original approach to his art:

00:43:11.124 --> 00:43:15.863
on the one hand, vigorously adopting
Leon Battista Alberti's famous advice

00:43:15.863 --> 00:43:19.566
on depicting the movement of figures
and their wind-blown hair and clothing,

00:43:20.567 --> 00:43:24.638
and at the same time emphatically
rejecting Alberto's injunction

00:43:24.638 --> 00:43:27.708
to soften their founding lines
through light and shading

00:43:28.008 --> 00:43:31.311
in order to present the most naturalistic image possible,

00:43:32.179 --> 00:43:36.049
as his contemporary rival Leonardo da Vinci
famously did.

00:43:37.217 --> 00:43:39.820
But Botticelli clearly wasn't interested

00:43:39.820 --> 00:43:42.823
in making his figures maximally realistic.

00:43:43.991 --> 00:43:46.493
On the other hand, he was hardly a painter

00:43:46.493 --> 00:43:49.062
who shied away from realism,

00:43:49.196 --> 00:43:51.865
as can be seen throughout
many of his works,

00:43:51.865 --> 00:43:54.801
most definitely including Primavera,

00:43:54.801 --> 00:43:58.171
with its overwhelming amount of vivid
botanical detail,

00:43:58.438 --> 00:44:03.377
featuring literally hundreds of different types
of flowering and non-flowering plants

00:44:03.377 --> 00:44:05.479
depicted with stunning accuracy.

00:44:06.079 --> 00:44:09.716
All of which could be found in
and around Florence.

00:44:11.151 --> 00:44:13.854
Surely such incomparable floral diversity

00:44:13.854 --> 00:44:19.159
wasn't strictly necessary to convey the
core conceptual themes behind the painting,

00:44:19.159 --> 00:44:21.962
but is instead a straightforward reflection

00:44:21.962 --> 00:44:27.501
of Botticelli's willful determination to indulge his fascination
with the botanical world.

00:44:28.435 --> 00:44:33.607
Just like, presumably,
his beguiling decision to frame the figure of Venus

00:44:33.607 --> 00:44:37.844
with a subtle but undeniable
lung shaped biological motif

00:44:38.211 --> 00:44:42.049
that's impossible to unsee
once it's been recognized.

00:44:43.517 --> 00:44:46.453
The few contemporary accounts we have of Botticelli

00:44:46.453 --> 00:44:49.256
strongly reinforce his independent spirit

00:44:49.489 --> 00:44:53.460
and playful determination
to indulge in provocative ambiguity

00:44:54.227 --> 00:44:57.698
with a now-lost Botticelli work
being described by the phrase:

00:44:58.098 --> 00:45:00.300
“Many expressed different opinions of it;

00:45:00.300 --> 00:45:02.903
no one agrees with anyone else;

00:45:02.903 --> 00:45:07.541
and all this is even more beautiful
than the painted images.”

00:45:08.675 --> 00:45:15.482
And then there's the fact that the famous Florentine scholar,
poet and tutor to Lorenzo Il Magnifico’s children,

00:45:15.482 --> 00:45:17.217
Angelo Poliziano,

00:45:17.217 --> 00:45:23.991
cites three separate Botticelli anecdotes in his book of witty expressions
written in the late 1470s,

00:45:24.424 --> 00:45:27.427
the only living artist so mentioned,

00:45:28.295 --> 00:45:32.566
Poliziano is a particularly relevant person to focus on, as it happens,

00:45:32.566 --> 00:45:38.872
because many scholars, recognizing the striking similarities
between his poetry and Primavera,

00:45:39.506 --> 00:45:42.776
have singled him out
as the driving intellectual force

00:45:42.776 --> 00:45:44.344
behind the painting’s program.

00:45:45.812 --> 00:45:51.018
But while the overlap between Poliziano’s poetry
and Primavera is unquestionable

00:45:51.351 --> 00:45:55.422
with wind-swept hair and diaphanous
clothing a common feature of both,

00:45:56.089 --> 00:46:01.995
and an explicit passage of Zephyr and Flora in Poliziano’s
Le Stanze per La Giostra

00:46:02.696 --> 00:46:06.400
it seems to me much more reasonable
to conclude that,

00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:11.838
rather than the ten-year younger Poliziano being Botticelli's
“official mythological director”,

00:46:12.472 --> 00:46:15.042
the two of them were simply friends

00:46:15.042 --> 00:46:18.045
who naturally influenced each other.

00:46:19.046 --> 00:46:21.081
Of course, Poliziano,

00:46:21.081 --> 00:46:24.618
like Cristoforo Landino and Marsilio Ficino,

00:46:25.152 --> 00:46:27.654
two other figures in the Medici
inner circle

00:46:27.654 --> 00:46:30.991
who are often regarded as Botticelli's
programmatic advisers,

00:46:31.725 --> 00:46:34.728
was one of the foremost literary
figures of his day,

00:46:34.795 --> 00:46:38.432
whose level of classical erudition
dwarfed Botticelli's.

00:46:40.067 --> 00:46:42.402
But Primavera isn't a poem.

00:46:42.402 --> 00:46:44.237
It's a painting;

00:46:44.237 --> 00:46:47.474
a boldly pioneering one,
loaded with a great many

00:46:47.474 --> 00:46:51.678
mythological, philosophical,
literary and artistic references,

00:46:52.212 --> 00:46:56.249
inspiringly woven together
in a way that even the artist himself

00:46:56.249 --> 00:46:58.752
might not have always been fully aware of.

00:46:59.953 --> 00:47:02.355
Because nobody creates in a vacuum.

00:47:03.223 --> 00:47:09.429
Consciously or unconsciously, we’re all influenced
by what we see and hear around us.

00:47:09.429 --> 00:47:16.269
So it is that many have pointed out stylistic similarities
to the contrapposto pose of Primavera’s Mercury

00:47:16.269 --> 00:47:19.039
and Donatello's famous statue of David

00:47:19.806 --> 00:47:24.678
or Verrocchio’s David, itself clearly influenced by Donatello’s,

00:47:25.879 --> 00:47:29.950
while others have remarked upon
a possible link between Primavera’s Zephyr

00:47:30.717 --> 00:47:35.055
and some figures in an ancient cameo
known as the Tazza Farnese,

00:47:35.455 --> 00:47:38.458
then in Lorenzo de’ Medici's
personal collection.

00:47:39.893 --> 00:47:44.464
We know of earlier cassone paintings
that also involved scenes of figures

00:47:44.464 --> 00:47:48.435
standing under trees
in a particularly Primavera-like way.

00:47:50.437 --> 00:47:55.108
And then there are the Roman statues
in the del Bufalo gardens that we saw earlier.

00:47:56.676 --> 00:47:59.045
But perhaps most striking of all

00:47:59.045 --> 00:48:03.216
is the remarkable structural similarity between Primavera

00:48:03.216 --> 00:48:10.624
and the garden scene in Buffalmacco’s monumental Pisan fresco
“The Triumph of Death” made well over a century earlier

00:48:10.624 --> 00:48:16.096
that Botticelli would have surely seen
in his documented 1474 stay in Pisa,

00:48:16.730 --> 00:48:20.734
complete with oranges only appearing after a brief period,

00:48:21.301 --> 00:48:25.205
this time as the action moves from left to right.

00:48:27.707 --> 00:48:29.810
But even more intriguing still

00:48:29.810 --> 00:48:32.946
are the many conspicuously modern references

00:48:32.946 --> 00:48:36.216
that Botticelli opted to include in Primavera,

00:48:37.250 --> 00:48:39.953
such as the white puffs of an underlying chemise

00:48:39.953 --> 00:48:42.455
poking through the sleeves of a dress,

00:48:42.455 --> 00:48:45.959
an elaborate pearl-adorned hairpin,

00:48:46.893 --> 00:48:48.595
intricate golden embroidery,

00:48:50.297 --> 00:48:52.332
floral-jeweled brooches,

00:48:53.700 --> 00:48:56.169
and a beautifully elegant veil.

00:48:57.037 --> 00:49:01.208
All of which were documented
aspects of high Florentine fashion

00:49:01.474 --> 00:49:04.578
that were very much in vogue
when he was painting Primavera,

00:49:05.312 --> 00:49:09.249
giving its figures a resounding sense
of contemporary reality.

00:49:10.383 --> 00:49:12.919
And then, most fascinating of all

00:49:12.919 --> 00:49:17.023
are several instances
of obviously slightly older items,

00:49:17.991 --> 00:49:21.795
like the medieval falchion sword
that Mercury has by his side.

00:49:22.896 --> 00:49:27.167
Or the old-fashioned, heavy,
pearl-adorned mantel that Venus wears.

00:49:28.301 --> 00:49:33.840
Both of which strongly suggest Botticelli,
invoking a sense of theatrical pageantry

00:49:34.608 --> 00:49:40.413
such as would be seen during popular public festivals
and the celebrated Medici jousting tournaments

00:49:40.413 --> 00:49:43.583
events that both Poliziano and Botticelli

00:49:43.917 --> 00:49:46.920
had explicitly glorified
in their own fashion,

00:49:47.354 --> 00:49:49.122
one through poetry

00:49:49.122 --> 00:49:51.324
and the other through art.

00:49:52.692 --> 00:49:55.495
Perhaps the right way to look at Primavera, then,

00:49:55.495 --> 00:49:58.765
is not simply as a form of visual poetry,

00:49:59.399 --> 00:50:02.102
but more as a sort of private theater

00:50:02.102 --> 00:50:05.672
dedicated to the reinforcement of timely, rustic values

00:50:05.672 --> 00:50:08.441
within an explicitly modern worldview.

00:50:09.809 --> 00:50:11.811
But if that's the case,

00:50:11.811 --> 00:50:15.015
an essential question
naturally presents itself.

00:50:16.049 --> 00:50:20.153
Who, exactly, was the intended audience
of this pastoral play?

00:50:20.553 --> 00:50:22.155
this private pageant?

00:50:23.223 --> 00:50:24.991
Who, in other words,

00:50:24.991 --> 00:50:28.828
is Venus inviting into her garden,
into this theater?

00:50:30.330 --> 00:50:32.365
Given everything we now know,

00:50:32.365 --> 00:50:35.669
one obvious possibility is Semiramide Appiani,

00:50:36.603 --> 00:50:38.905
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's new bride,

00:50:40.040 --> 00:50:43.209
the one person who, more than anyone else,

00:50:43.209 --> 00:50:46.179
bears direct responsibility for ensuring that

00:50:46.179 --> 00:50:50.083
the springtime of the Medici
continues far into the future.

00:50:52.118 --> 00:50:53.453
As it happens,

00:50:53.453 --> 00:50:56.022
several experts have strongly endorsed the notion

00:50:56.022 --> 00:51:00.160
that Semiramide was the specifically-designed
recipient of Primavera.

00:51:01.695 --> 00:51:03.029
In particular,

00:51:03.029 --> 00:51:08.501
by astutely combining a wide range of historical documents
and scholarly analysis,

00:51:09.336 --> 00:51:13.840
Michael Rohlmann deduced that Semiramide
had her own personal chamber;

00:51:14.808 --> 00:51:17.844
and it was there, over her lettuccio,

00:51:17.844 --> 00:51:19.779
that Primavera was hung,

00:51:19.779 --> 00:51:24.784
offering unlimited private viewing of
its elaborately tailor-made message

00:51:24.784 --> 00:51:27.354
that was addressed directly to her.

00:51:28.922 --> 00:51:33.159
In fact, Rohlmann and his colleagues are convinced
that another Botticelli painting,

00:51:33.159 --> 00:51:34.728
Pallas and the Centaur,

00:51:34.728 --> 00:51:37.364
also hung in Semiramide’s chamber,

00:51:37.998 --> 00:51:42.102
and was also created for her 1482 wedding to Lorenzo,

00:51:42.102 --> 00:51:45.171
as a sort of allegorical pendant to Primavera.

00:51:46.306 --> 00:51:50.510
But that's another painting, and another story.