La Pimavera (Spring)

Name: La Primavera (Spring)

Date: 1478-c.1485

Artist: Sandro Botticelli (born Alessandro Filipepi)

Location: Florence, Uffizi Gallery, inv. 1890 no. 8360

Approximate Dimensions: 203x314 cm

Medium: tempera paint on panel

Sources of info: http://www.palazzo-medici.it/mediateca/en/schede.php?id_scheda=78

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Significance of the work:

The only documentation that La Primavera is a work of Botticelli comes from 16th century sources, but there is nothing dated previously attest to the attribution. Normally, the nine figures are respectively identified as follows: in the centre is Venus, the goddess of love. Flying above the goddess is Cupid, blindfolded, and about to fire his arrow in the direction of the Three Graces, who are dancing in a circle. On the left is Mercury, with his winged sandals, and on the right, Zephyrus is carrying off the nymph Chloris, alongside the goddess Flora.In the painting the leading figure is Venus herself, the goddess of Love (as also indicated by the presence of Cupid), and hence an allegory of the virtuous intellectual activities that elevate man from the senses (Zephyrus- Chloris- Flora) through reason (the Graces) to contemplation (Mercury). Scholars have declares that the grass beneath the figures is strewn with one hundred and ninety different flowers, of which one hundred and thirty have been identified.