Revisiting Masterpieces: Sandro Botticelli's "La Primavera" | OMNP Arts

Sandro Botticelli’s “La Primavera”

Sandro Boticelli's "La Primavera"

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The change in season feels a little strange this year. Most of us welcome the warmer temperatures that bring back the sunny side of life. Yet shouldn’t that feel a little escapist right now?

The world is in some pretty gloomy times after all. But you can’t fight human nature. The winter has left us pasty, and those clouds over our heads are getting in the way of some seriously needed tan time. Blissful ignorance was part of what got us into this mess. But if it rejuvenates us, maybe it can help to get us out.

The strange atmosphere of Sandro Botticelli’s “La Primavera,” (The Arrival of Spring) becomes all the more striking when considering such moral ambiguity. Here’s a definitive work of our cheerful time of rebirth. Yet its tinge of darkness is unmistakable.

Pain and humiliation have been intertwined with beauty and virtue. Chloris (second to right) is transformed into Flora (third to right) by the wind god Zephyr (far right), out of an act of penance. Zephyr had raped her and forced her into marriage, but then felt bad about what he did.

He decided to make her into an alluring goddess, who can do things like breathe flowers during the month of May, and scatter the roses of Venus, the Goddess of Love (center) . The ego of this guy. As our present day situation becomes all the more dire however, perhaps we can take solace in a story of beauty following the deplorable.

Sandro Botticelli, “La Primavera,” c. 1482. Tempera on panel, 80 x 24 in., Uffizi Gallery, Florence [High resolution image]

“La Primavera: The Private Life of a Masterpiece” [BBC via Youtube]

La Primavera [Wikipedia]

One Thought

Douglass Montrose-Graem says:

03/31/2009 at 2:10 pm

Thank you for your erudition:
For our so sweet delectation!

Your Thoughts...

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