Painting
Primavera
Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482
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Renaissance · chronological order 5
Tempera on panel, painted by Sandro Botticelli around 1482 for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici and his villa at Castello, outside Florence. It hangs in the Uffizi.
The painting brings together, in a mythological garden, Venus in the centre, Cupid above her head, the three Graces dancing on the left, Mercury pushing the clouds away with his caduceus, and on the right Zephyr (the west wind) seizing the nymph Chloris, who turns into Flora (goddess of spring). The whole garden works as an allegory of love and spring, built on the writings of Marsilio Ficino, the household philosopher of the Medici.