Primavera (Botticelli)
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| Primavera |
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| Sandro Botticelli , around 1482/1487 |
| Tempera on wood |
| 203 × 314 cm |
| Uffizi Gallery |
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Primavera (Spring) is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli . The picture is one of the most famous and most frequently reproduced works of Western art. The meaning of the image, its function in the dynastic and cultural politics of the Medici , has been interpreted in different ways in the course of time and so far has not been convincingly clarified in art studies. Botticelli liked to deal with allegorical subjects, which were very popular with the intellectual elite of the Medici court, but which make today's interpretation difficult.
Historical and literary sources
The Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari mentions in his - not always reliable - vitae of 1550 a painting by Botticelli in Villa Castello of the Tuscan Grand Duke Cosimo de 'Medici with a " Venus , which is crowned by the Graces with spring flowers."
The based on this assumption, the The picture belongs to the furnishings of his country house and was only discarded by the sources published in 1975, which consistently showed that the picture belonged to a city palace of an older generation of the Medici in Florence. It was part of the furnishing of a room next to the "camera terrena" of Lorenzo il Popolano . The room with a sofa was probably the bedroom of Lorenzo's wife, Semiramide Appiani. It was furnished with a series of images that dealt with the different roles and virtues of men and women.
As first pointed Aby Warburg , the founder of iconology , which is the science of interpretation of image content , in its Strasbourg dissertation from 1893 ancient writers as literary sources to the image after. For passages from the Fasti of Ovid and from the Odes of Horace there were references from contemporary authors such as Alberti and Poliziano . Further text passages that are helpful for deciphering the picture can be found in the Aeneid of Virgil and in “ De rerum natura ” by Lucretius .
Warburg has put forward the following theory about the meaning of the image: The theme is the "rule of Venus". Zephyr, the god of the west wind on the far right of the picture, pursues Flora, the Roman goddess of plants. Everything she touches becomes plants, including the goddess of spring on her left, who is just about to scatter flowers. The focus is on Venus, the goddess of love, who invites the viewer into her realm with the gesture of her hand and with her gaze. Amor hovers above it, who is now drawing the bow in the direction of the three graces, who are connected in a spring dance. On the far left is Mercury, who is pushing the indicated clouds aside in a symbolic gesture. According to Aby Warburg's interpretation, the picture would be a glorification of erotic love.
description
The large-format picture shows a group of eight people lined up in front of an orange grove with a blind Cupid above the figure in the middle who is about to shoot an arrow. Cupid is the constant companion of the goddess of love Venus. This, in the picture in the central position, has stepped back a little from the line. She wears a light white dress and a red cloak that she threw over her right shoulder and raised arm. On her left, Flora strides across the meadow and scatters roses. Beside her, a bluish man with a fluttering handkerchief rushes at a young woman who turns to him but at the same time flees from the onrushing person. Rose petals come out of her mouth. The man can be recognized by his puffed cheeks as a wind god Zephyr who is about to seize the nymph Chloris . Ovid says:
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... as she spoke, she breathed spring roses out of her mouth: I was Chloris, whom I am [now] called Flora. .. and it was spring, I was wandering about; Zephyrus saw me, I went away. He followed, I flee, that one was stronger [...] But he made amends for the act of violence by giving me the name of his wife, and in my marriage there is no cause for complaint. I always enjoy spring, the season is always lush, the trees have leaves and food is always the ground.
In Ovid's poem, Zephyr took the nymph by force and then made her his wife. Only through the union of the two is the lush flowering and fruit bearing of the field, dowry of the nymph, secured. In a dress strewn with flowers and wreathed with flowers, the nymph, transformed into the spring goddess Flora , walks and scatters roses from her apron into the flower meadow.
On the right side of Venus, three women wrapped in light veils dance in a round dance - it is the three graces, symbols of feminine grace and beauty, who often appear as companions of Venus, especially in pictures of the Renaissance. On the left outer edge of the picture, Mercury , the god of merchants, but also the patron of house and court, pokes with his staff, the caduceus , in the gathering dark clouds. Apparently it prevents dark shadows from forming in the serene, paradisiacal garden.
Interpretations
The picture has given rise to different and contradicting interpretations, the reasons for which are not always valid or even satisfactory and are only sketched in gaps in the following.
Art historians of the Warburg School such as Edgar Wind and Ernst Gombrich see in the picture a reflection of Neoplatonic philosophy, as it was taught at Cosimo's court by Marsilio Ficino , among others . With Ficino, love is by all means an elementary human driving force; but it is also the force that can transform the material world into a spiritual world of ideas. She awakens the sensual passions, which she can sublimate to humanity and universal harmony. The rather rare depiction of a clothed Venus can be seen in this context. The three graces here become the embodiment of selfless love - in the sense of Seneca as liberalitas - as giving, receiving and reciprocating favors.
Charles Dempsey sees a symbolization of spring in the picture , with Zephyr, Chloris and Flora personifying the stormy spring month of March, Venus, Cupid and the Graces of April and Mercury of May. Maia was the mother of god, and according to Ovid, the name of this month is derived from Maia.
Other interpreters interpret the picture as a Christian allegory , with the three graces being interpreted as the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love or as a pictorial translation of the song 28-31, Purgatorium , from Dante's divine comedy . According to this view, the central figure represents Dante's Beatrice, the woman in the flower dress Eve , Zephyr Satan and Mercury Adam, who is reaching for the forbidden fruits of Paradise.
There are also a number of astrological interpretations that are based on complicated astronomical calculations of the position of the stars at the time the image was created and that refer to the preference for astrological speculations at the Medici court and in the Renaissance in general.
According to Frank Zöllner's interpretation , the picture belongs to the genre of wedding pictures, which were often commissioned at the courts of the Renaissance for such occasions. Lorenzo il Popolano was in 1483 to the underage and orphaned Semiramide Appiani, daughter of Jacopo III. from Piombino , married.
A number of indications in the picture speak for this thesis as the key to Primavera: The clothed Venus does not embody sensual passion here, but sexuality tamed in marriage and fulfilled in the continuation of the family. The myrtle branches , which can be clearly seen in the nimbus-like neckline around the head of Venus, are symbols of both virginity and marriage. The involuntary marriage between Zephyr and Chloris ended, according to Ovid, to the satisfaction of all concerned. A laurel - laurus nobilis - spreads over the couple , an allusion to the name Lorenzo familiar to the contemporary observer, just as one could easily read the oranges as the imprese of the Medici. In Botticelli's picture the orange trees, which bear abundant blossoms and fruit, only begin after the scene of the violent conquest of the nymph by Zephyr, hint and wish for rich offspring in the wedding couple. The graces, symbols of feminine beauty and virtue in this interpretation, indicate the virtuous life expected of the bride and Mercury, who drives away the clouds, watches over the well-being of the house, that is, of the house of Medici.
According to more recent studies, however, it could also be the cycle of the seasons with the months from February on the right in the form of the Zephyr to September on the left as Mercury.
The literary scholar Dietrich Schwanitz largely agrees with the interpretation of the Warburg School. In his book Education. Everything you need to know from 1999 he writes: “The following is a hint of an interpretation: Zephyr, the wind, approaches from the right and exudes the divine breath; he hugs the nymph Chloris and fills her with spirit in the image of a conception of copulation. Chloris transforms through the hug and becomes the next figure: Flora. This refers to the central figure who gave the picture its name: Primavera. All of this is also an image of love. Heaven turns to earth with passion and transforms it through spring. Opposite to this is Mercury, the mediator between heaven and earth, on the left side of the picture, and turns back to heaven. He represents the resurgence of the mind. Between him and the central figure of Primavera stand the three graces, who as Venus, Juno and Athena represent beauty, harmony and wisdom. They have their hands clasped so that they sometimes float above their heads and sometimes below at thigh height. They are conveyed by the middle class, who are exactly at eye level. Together they symbolize once again the way of the spirit. This is the platonic cycle of the outpouring of the spirit and its return to heaven in the form of cosmological eroticism. And you can see that the images of the Renaissance can only be understood if you know Greek mythology, philosophy and of course the personalities of love. "
In the figure of the spring scattering flowers to the right of Venus, Botticelli may have dressed the figure of the early deceased Simonetta Vespucci , according to an older and recently re-represented view . It bears the delicate, pale, melancholy expression that is typical of Botticelli and which recurs in numerous allegorical depictions and portraits.
Significantly, Simonetta, the adored of Giuliano , brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent , and the only woman ever mentioned in connection with Botticelli, was born in the city of Porto Venere , literally translated as "Port of Venus", where according to ancient belief the goddess of beauty first set foot on Italian soil.
reception
René Magritte integrated the figure of Flora into his painting Le bouquet tout fait from 1956, a 46 × 34 cm gouache that is now in a private collection.
literature
- Horst Bredekamp : Botticelli: Primavera. Florence as the garden of Venus (= Fischer 3944). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-23944-3 .
- Charles Dempsey: Botticelli's Primavera and Humanistic Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1997, ISBN 0691-01573-2 .
- Maria-Christine Leitgeb: daughter of light. Art and propaganda in Medici Florence. Parthas-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86601-470-8 .
- Mirella Levi d'Ancona: Botticelli's Primavera. A Botanical Interpretation Including Astrology, Alchemy and the Medici (= Arte e archeologia. AA. Studi e documenti. 20). Olschki, Florence 1983, ISBN 88-222-3131-7 .
- Andreas Schumacher (Ed.): Botticelli. Portrait - Myth - Devotion. An exhibition by the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, November 13 to February 28, 2010. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7757-2480-7 .
- Aby Warburg : Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and "Spring". An Inquiry into the Concepts of Antiquity in the Early Italian Renaissance. Voss, Hamburg et al. 1893, digitized , (Also in: Aby M. Warburg: Selected writings and appreciations (= Saecvla spiritalia. Vol. 1). Published by Dieter Wuttke in conjunction with Carl Georg Heise . 2nd, improved and bibliographically supplemented edition Koerner, Baden-Baden 1980, ISBN 3-87320-400-2 , pp. 11-64; dissertation Strasbourg 1893).
- Frank Zöllner : Botticelli. Images of Love and Spring. Prestel, Munich et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7913-1985-X .
Web links
- Astrological interpretation, Italian
- Photographic reproduction of Botticelli's Primavera (zoomable, 28 gigapixels)