Sometimes called 'Allegory of Spring', this painting is one the the most lyrical in all of Western art. It combines a pleasing tang of classical antiquity with dreamy contemporary quality. The faces and figures are drawn so masterfully that the obvious effort of fashioning them is completely hidden. Botticelli painted Primavera for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici to decorate his villa on the outskirts of Florence. Primavera is the best antidote for the gloom of winter.
From the start, it should be pointed out that this is the same forest, the same trees, the same foliage, the same spacing between the trees, the same land, the same ground, the same flower patches as in his Birth of venus. In other words, Venus was born and landed in this second painting which is Spring - it is the continuation. We still find her as the composition's central focus, but dressed as a sovereign. From the profane Venus we saw earlier, nude, we now progress to the sacred Venus, dressed as a matron in the noblest sense of the term. As such, she is truly the patron saint of the forces and elements and is surrounded by everything she needs to triumph over the twelve months of the year, the four seasons and, thus, eternity.
Mercury extends his caduceus to stop the wind which had been blowing earlier with Zephyr and his brother and, at the same time, stops winter from becoming spring. The striking group of the three Graces, perhaps the most beautiful ever painted, is the affirmation of Primavera, that is, Spring, which Venus is still facing. Then time passes, and we see the affirmation of summer, represented here by Flora, whose robe is now, so to speak, made of flowers and who is strewing flowers, the product of her generosity, on the ground. And autumn by Chloe, who is nearly timidly turned toward a blue and somewhat terrifying character who is trying to catch her. This character is Zephyr who, at one time, forgot to blow, because he was chasing the nymph, Chloe through the woods.
What is absolutely extraordinary, if one thinks back to the Birth, is that we have Zephyr, Venus and a Grace in the first painting, and here, we have Mercury, the Graces, Venus, Flora, Chloe and Zephyr. It all begins and ends with Zephyr; the two paintings thus form a complete cycle of seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn. This was all done in order to show us nature's cycle which is so inherent to the Hesiodic Neo-Platonic inspiration for people such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and others who dreamed of that period. But it also shows us the primacy of sacred love, as it is incarnated here, over profane love, over the fragility of the water and the shell in the preceding work. In fact, all the allusions could be studied at much greater length to show all the similarities between the two paintings. For the time being, let's take a walk through Spring.
On the left, Mercury and the Graces and, above all, the very beautiful image of Mercury raising his caduceus to stop the clouds and the wind in order to allow the Graces to dance peacefully - nothing could be more beautiful. The robes appear to be transparent but aren't, as one can barely make out the bodies. The bodies are part of the dance, as the cloth really dances and the arm movements, in particular, are sublime. Then we have Venus in the center of the composition, in this nearly solemn pose she has assumed, a matron presiding over the year, as it develops with the character of Flora, one of the loveliest details of Spring, and Chloe and Zephyr, the last three characters whose dancing, here again, is the exact counterpoint to the group of the three Graces.
Details of Flora's face, the best-known in Botticelli's works, of Flora's robe, which is like a rendering of the Grace's robe in the Birth of Venus. All of her movements are also the result of a deliberate distortion of the flowers and the bouquet of flowers she is preparing to throw to the world. Finally, Chloe, pursued by Zephyr who, in both instances has the same distended cheeks; in one case, he is blue, this is the winter Zephyr, in the other, the Birth of Venus, he is nearly yellow, this is the spring Zephyr.
Leaving these paintings which represent one of the heights of Botticelli's profane painting, we hope that we have succeeded in demonstrating the extent to which it responds to an iconographic program, the extent to which this program is a myth and the extent to which the myth is meant to educate us about the primacy of sacred love over profane love. It is paramount to be aware of this, as we can already note that in the Christian paintings, Botticelli never even tries to educate. On the other hand, in the pagan paintings, from Mars and Venus on and mostly with the Birth of Venus and Spring, we can see that there is an attempt at education. It is rather extraordinary to realize that Botticelli is more at ease in this mythical didactic role with the "pagan" gods than with his perennial Christianity.