Sandro Botticelli: The Golden Age of Florence (Part 1)

0:01 Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm James Fox. And I am Alastair Souk. In a shady woodland glade, beneath a canopy of trees and atop a carpet of blossoming wildflowers, nine people come together. A man is poking a wand at some clouds. Three girls are dancing barefoot in see-through dresses. One figure seems to be groping another, while another is in the process of scattering petals around her.

0:32 It's all rather Summer of Love, or Woodstock 1969, but this is actually a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance and one of the most celebrated paintings in history, Sandro Botticelli's Primavera. Now, why, Alistair, do you think this picture is so beloved? Well, I think, James, it's important to say from the off that for a very long time, it wasn't.

0:56 Botticelli was one of the really primary big artists, wasn't he, of Florentine art in the 15th century. You know, he's synonymous with the early Italian Renaissance. But then even within his own lifetime, his reputation starts to wane a bit. And I know much later in this two-part series, we'll get into his legacy, his afterlife.

1:17 But It's not really until the 19th century that he comes back into fashion. And he comes back into fashion partly thanks to publications like this one, which I brought along today. This is a book that was published in 1873 called The Renaissance by an English art critic, the kind of guy I imagine would drive you mad.

1:34 He's called Walter Pater, and I say that because he was very into... quite impressionistic, subjective responses to paintings. And he, in this book, wrote a series of essays. One of them was about Sandro Botticelli. And the thing that I found very interesting going back to it ahead of doing this is he begins it by saying, in an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his, Botticelli's life, is almost colourless, which I have to say quickly from the off for the listeners, not true.

2:01 Not true at all. This is going to be a colourful couple of episodes. But he also says that Botticelli's name was little known in the last century and is quite... quietly becoming important. And it's significant because this is a moment when really quite established major figures in the field of art history start to become very interested in Botticelli and start to write about and champion Primavera.

2:26 And Primavera is one of Botticelli's so-called mythological paintings. Lots of people will be familiar with another very famous one, The Birth of Venus, also in the Uffizi in Florence. We'll be discussing that in episode two of this series. Which we're going to come on to. But I think there are a couple of reasons why perhaps the painting itself, talking about Primavera now, is still so resonant.

2:48 One is that it is very complex in terms of what exactly it depicts. There's no single source that's ever been identified, literary source, that Botticelli was adapting. And I suspect that consequently it has this enigmatic puzzle-like quality that appeals to lots and lots of art historians. And I think also it's become, as a result of it being canonised, if you like, by those writers – It now is seen as being the ideal of early Italian Renaissance art.

3:20 It's an ideal of that art and also an ideal somehow of beauty with that beautiful Venus standing in the middle of it. It's also just so sexy. I mean, I think Botticelli is such a sexy artist, isn't he? And it's not just the subject matter, although the subject matter can be very steamy. It's just his style is so sexy.

3:38 The lines, the contours, the immaculate surfaces, the textures. like Rubens, maybe Renoir at his best, who just produce work that is just so alluring and so beguiling. I think that's one of the reasons why Botticelli cuts through in the modern era as well. It's quite different to... Rubens is all kind of quivering, palpitating flesh and rosy cheeks.

4:01 This, I know what you're saying, there's a kind of... But there's more elegance, I would say, in Botticelli. And I think specifically in this painting that we'll come on to in a second half today to discuss in depth... There's such a sense of mysterious poetry somehow. You mentioned the guy with the wand, by the way.

4:16 I've always loved him. We'll be coming on to details. But to me, he looks like a very camp domestic cleaner who's just cleaning away cobwebs in the top of the painting. While listening to a podcast on his earbuds or something like that. Well, look, over the next two episodes, we are going to talk about Primavera, but we're also going to tell the story of an artist who seems to epitomise the beauty and glamour of the Florentine Renaissance, but someone who remains something of a mystery.

4:42 So this then is the first in our two-part series on the life and work of Sandro Botticelli. Alistair, before we get started with the story, do we need to address the name Botticelli? Yes, of course, because you've set up that we're about to do a two-parter on Sandro Botticelli, but that's not his name.

5:08 That's not his name at all. So, in fact, he's born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, And there are a couple of schools of thought about why he ends up being known as Sandro Botticelli. And one of them is that in Vasari, the great 16th century art historian, he says that he trained with a goldsmith who may have been called Botticello, was it?

5:31 Or Botticelli, and hence Sandro Botticelli eventually takes that nickname. And we should say that in Italian, what that word means is a little barrel or a small wine cask. But my understanding anyway is that people don't really believe the Vasari line now. I mean, there is a question of whether he did train with a goldsmith.

5:50 It's a very interesting idea. But the Botticelli nickname perhaps comes from an older brother called, what's he called? Giovanni? Giovanni. Giovanni. And one assumes that either he was just, he was quite fat... He was a tubby, stocky figure, Giovanni. Or he was a massive drunk who liked drinking a lot of wine.

6:10 Or both. Who knows? He sounds like, I mean, his life was not colourless. That we can be sure of. But what becomes apparent is that Sandro takes his brother's nickname. It seems that nickname can be applied to several of the brothers in the family. And eventually he actually takes it as a professional name, which is very interesting in itself.

6:31 So they're the little barrels. The little barons. The Botticelli. Well, let's talk about his life story. So, Sandro Botticelli, he's born Alessandro, is born in Florence in about 1445. This is really an amazing moment in history, isn't it? I mean, Florence in the 15th century is the one of, but pretty much the big centre of the Italian Renaissance, the early Italian Renaissance.

6:56 And it's a city that is filled with merchants, bankers, dominated by various families, but one of them, the great banking dynasty, the Medici. And it's quite rich as a result in terms of there are lots of patrons who are now interested in commissioning works of art. Yeah, and you've got amazing artists and architects going.

7:18 Brunelleschi, who did the Great Dome of the Cathedral, is still alive. Donatello is at work. Fra Angelico is at work. It's a great moment. There's a real sense. It's very prosperous. It's very culturally alive. It's very dynamic. And this is the world into which Sandro Botticelli is born in the mid-1440s.

7:36 Isn't it famous for its luxury textiles as well? As today. Even wool coming from England, I believe, is coming into the city to be processed, to be refined. This is a great source of the city's wealth. So you have all of these craftsmen and probably organised in guilds who are operating within the city, one of whom may even have been related to dear old Sandro.

7:57 Yes. Yeah, and Sandro is part of that. He comes from this area in Florence called Ognisanti, which is an area full of artisans. His father is a tanner, so he's responsible for turning hides into leather. He's the youngest of eight children. His parents are very old, actually, when they have him. We don't know much about Sandro Botticelli's childhood, though there is a fascinating tax return.

8:23 We love a tax return on this podcast. If such a thing could exist, that his father files in 1458 when Sandro is 13 years old. And in this tax return, he includes the name Sandro Botticelli, and then he writes next to it, sta allegere ed e malsano, which means he is studying... and sickly. Now, that probably doesn't mean he had flu at that point.

8:46 It probably means he was too ill to enter the workforce age 13. So maybe he had some kind of chronic condition, maybe it was asthma or something that prevented him taking up an apprenticeship or entering the tannery. What we do know... is 100 years later, Giorgio Vasari, who you've already mentioned, he actually constructs an entire ADHD personality.

9:07 Totally. I was going to ask you whether you think he would have been diagnosed today. Yeah. I mean, this is what Vasari writes. He says, but although he found it easy to learn whatever he wished... Nevertheless, he was ever restless, nor was he contented with any form of learning, whether reading, writing or arithmetic, in so much that his father, wary of the vagaries of his son's brain, in despair apprenticed him as a goldsmith.

9:29 It's a brilliant pen portrait, that, isn't it? Because thanks to Vasari, we always have this impression of the young Botticelli as being, as you say, hyperactive, very quick-witted. He supposedly loves a good pun. He loves a good practical joke. And you also have this sense of an exhausted dad, which I'm very sympathetic to.

9:50 But, you know, the young Sandro Botticelli must have been a very dynamic, charismatic individual. And you have a sense, even though Vasari's writing much later, that he was precociously talented. And on some level, that unusual spark is being recognised, right? I'm slightly away with the fairies as well, though.

10:10 So he does actually enter a goldsmith's workshop, age 13, 14, which is quite old to start an apprenticeship at that point. It could be with his brother, because one of his brothers, Antonio, was a goldsmith. I think the goldsmithing is actually a key to really understanding his style. Yes, definitely.

10:26 Because one of the defining characteristics of Botticelli's work is this amazing command of line, of contour, this decorative imagination. He loves detail. I'm sure it comes from goldsmithing. Yeah. But ADHD, as he is, he refuses to stay as a goldsmith after about a year. He says, I don't want to be a goldsmith.

10:42 I want to be a painter. And so he enters the workshop of one of Florence's leading artists, a tubby friar called Fra Filippo Lippi, who's an amazing character in his own right. He's a lot of fun, Fra Filippo Lippi. Yeah. He is born probably around 1406 in Florence. So he's a slightly earlier generation of artists in Florence.

11:03 He dies in Spoleto in 1469. And he is an orphan and he ends up in a friary, doesn't he, in Florence. And he's one of a few artists at this time who they're sort of they have this religious designation. You know, there's Lorenzo Monaco, Lorenzo the monk, another artist, I think, Fra Filippo Lippi. The thing about Lippi is that he belongs to a generation where he's influenced by another artist called Massaccio.

11:32 He is introducing a greater sense of naturalism. There's a very expressive linear quality to his work. These are things that Botticelli learns from him. But the thing about him is that he's associated with the religious life. But in terms of his personal private life, he's about as monastic as Casanova.

11:51 I mean, he has this reputation for being a great womaniser. Isn't there some anecdote about how he... I mean, it's always put rather boldly in some of the sources, but he abducts a nun. So there's a period where he's working, I think, doing frescoes outside of Florence. Prato. In Prato, thank you. And he's a chaplain.

12:09 And he ends up running away with a nun. Sorry, abducting this nun called Lucrezia Buti. She's 30 years younger than him. Well, it's quite a scandal, right? And in the end, I think he has dispensation to marry her, finally. They do have a son, Filipino, who ends up in Fra Filippo Lippi's workshop as well.

12:28 Great artist. Great artist and subsequently is apprenticed to Botticelli, where he has set up independently. And there are these other great anecdotes about, you know, I think we'll be coming on in a moment to talk about the great Medici family, the banking dynasty that effectively are ruling Florence in the 15th century and had dominated the city for such a long time.

12:49 And Cosimo de Medici, who was such a big figure at this moment, he supposedly was getting a bit frustrated, wasn't he, with Fra Filippo Lippi's antics. Actually kind of puts him, says, basically locks him up in his house or a house in a building, says, you've got to get to work. And the guy ends up constructing a rope of sheets and actually escapes.

13:07 So he's clearly totally incorrigible. And I know that I've run away from the art entirely, but it's irresistible with him because the anecdotal biographical stuff in his case is just really very amusing. It's so good. So Botticelli enters his workshop. in the around 1460 roughly that kind of time he's in the workshop for quite a long time he learns a lot from Filippo Lippi who you know despite his character flaws was a really great artist and but Filippo Lippi dies at the end of the 1460s and by 1470 we know so age 25 or so Sandra Botticelli has emerged as an artist in his own right with his own workshop as a master career is how quickly he becomes very, very successful, how quickly he becomes connected to the elites.

13:56 Now, you've already mentioned this. Florence at this point is nominally a republic, but really it's a plutocracy. It's dominated by a small number of very wealthy families. And the wealthiest of those families is the Medici. The Medici have dominated Florence's economy and its politics for much of the 15th century.

14:15 In the 1470s, it's run by Lorenzo the He came up. We can refer listeners and viewers to our wonderful Michelangelo series. Perhaps our best yet. It's up there. It's up there. It's a good one. Hang on, we've got this one to come. So Botticelli very quickly in the 1470s becomes a trusted painter for the Medici themselves.

14:38 We don't quite know why, but he does. One of the reasons we know this is from the portraits he makes. He makes lots of portraits in the 1470s into the 1480s of the Medici and their associates. And I wanted to talk about portraiture, Alastair. Oh, yes. Yes. Because at this point in the 1470s, portrait paintings are really new in Italy.

14:59 And most of those that are being made in Italy are very archaic. They mostly show people side-on as though they're sort of Roman medals, Roman coins. And Botticelli becomes one of these pioneering painters of portraits in the 1470s. He is a stunning painter of portraits. I mean, as I was cycling over here, I thought, if I could have any artist from history paint my portrait...

15:20 I think I would choose Botticelli because they're so glam. There's so much swagger. There's so much beauty. Do you remember there was a very rare Botticelli portrait that sold at auction about five years ago? I remember it very well because I had to write about it as soon as that sale occurred because it was such a big price, wasn't it?

15:38 92 or 93 million dollars. Yeah, it was huge, which is sort of the second most expensive Old Master picture ever sold at auction after, of course, Leonardo Salvatore Mundi, which went for way, way more, but such an outlier. Such a luscious painting. It's the portrait of a young man. He's holding a medallion, a roundel.

15:57 You have this... Slightly effete youth, male youth. He's soberly dressed. He has dark black doublets, I guess. You can see just the edge of her as an undershirt, something white around his neck. Quite long, reddish-brownish hair. And he is sitting in front of a sort of stone opening that appears to be looking onto the sky.

16:18 There's a beautiful blue behind that frames his head, and it feels like you're taken through to another space. Yeah. He's holding, as I say, this medallion, this roundel, which itself is actually a piece of Sienese art from the previous century. So there's a, I guess, is it a saint, a bearded saint who's depicted in that roundel, that medallion?

16:37 But there's an obvious play and contrast between the modern manner that Botticelli is pioneering with this revolutionary type of portraiture. and then this archaic figure of religious figure in the round or beneath. He has very long, slender fingers, which are creeping over stone parapets. You can see a shadow underneath the fingers so that it gives you an impression against a 3D space.

16:58 And I love the idea that Botticelli is part of this generation of Italians who are actually being influenced by innovations in Northern Europe, in Netherlandish art. People like Van Eyck, the way that Van Eyck's transforming portraiture And of course, the Medici have all of these mercantile links, don't they, with Northern Europe.

17:15 So there's a... I wouldn't mind Van Eyck painting my portrait, actually. I mean, well, he really kicks it all off. And they are phenomenal. The thing about Botticelli is actually he's a very innovative portraitist as well. So there's a portrait that he makes, which is a wonderful picture in the V&A in London of a woman called Smeralda Bandinelli.

17:33 Once owned by Rossetti. Yeah, indeed. He bought it for 20 quid. And it's one of the first paintings in Italian history that shows a woman actually looking out at the viewer, which is one of the reasons perhaps why in subsequent years someone actually scratched away the eyes. There's also, perhaps his most celebrated portrait, is one in the Uffizi in Florence, in which we see a young man holding a medal.

18:00 Same device almost. Same device. And on that medal brings us back to the Medici. It's a likeness of Cosimo de' Medici. It was one of the great Medici figures of the 1450s, 1460s. And the most amazing thing about that picture, and you don't realise it until you go to the Uffizi to see it in the flesh, is it's actually a 3D medal.

18:18 He actually cast it, gilded it and stuck it into the picture. So really, really fascinating. I mean, it's interesting. as well that I think there are only around about a dozen portraits by Botticelli that are known to have survived and you mentioned the one that we just discussed a bit that sold for such a big price at auction.

18:35 Within the last few years another Botticelli portrait actually came up for sale and was shown at the Fries Masters Art Fair in Regent's Park. The reason I mention it is because You have rightly identified that there's a glam sort of swagger, that quality to often these young men that he's depicting and indeed women.

18:53 But this portrait that was at Fries Masters was of, I think, a philosopher, a scholar. And his expression was just quite, I thought, quite sour and he was a bit more middle aged. And unsurprisingly, it didn't really sell for, I mean, still a large amount of money, but nothing like the stratospheric sum that the young man with the round will achieve.

19:11 Let's turn to his big breakthrough work in some ways. His first major, major work is called The Adoration of the Magi. It dates to about 1475, so he's 30 years old or so at this time. And this really establishes how close to the Medici he actually is. It was commissioned by a banker, another banker who actually wasn't a member of the Medici family, called Guaspare di Zanobi del Lama.

19:37 It's a pretty accomplished altarpiece, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, worth probably reminding people that the adoration of the Magi, this is the story of the three wise men who follow the star of Bethlehem and they turn up to pay homage and give gifts to the baby Jesus. And you can see in this composition, this tumble down derelict building with weeds growing out of the stonework.

20:00 kind of slightly jerry-built manger's wooden shelter roof above. And sitting quite high up is Mary with the baby Jesus, Joseph behind her, I think, asleep. And then in the foreground, as well as the three magi, you have all of these, they're retinue. And everyone here is dressed so sumptuously. It's a real fashion parade.

20:26 And I find it interesting because, I mean, the point that you were hinting at, which of course is correct, is that when people look at the depictions of the Magi, they see portraits of key Medici figures. So Cosimo, who we've mentioned, is probably the one who's actually, is he washing Jesus' feet with a veil?

20:47 I think there's some ritualistic significance to that. His son, is it Piero the Gouty, is the one in red who's immediately beneath... There's another, Medici, who is to his right, who's the third Magi. And then there's supposition that Lorenzo, who's in charge at the moment, is seen in profile in black and red towards the right.

21:09 That's Lorenzo the Magnificent, isn't it? Magnificent. And his brother, who I'm sure we'll be talking about in a moment, may be holding a sword, looking very proud and haughty on the left of the picture. There's also, we can see a man in blue looking out at us and pointing to himself. That is probably the guy who commissioned it.

21:25 That's him saying, I pay for this. Yes. But on the right of the picture, the far right, we can see a young, rather beautiful man, delicate features, pale hair, looking out at us in an orange robe. And that is probably a self-portrait. That is probably Sandro Botticelli himself. You know who he reminds me of?

21:43 You know the actor in The Bear? Yeah. Jeremy Allen White. Oh, yeah. I think if I were casting a film about Botticelli, I would cast Jeremy Allen White. So I want all of our listeners, as they follow this story, to think of Jeremy Allen White. Is he the guy who wears those very well-cut white T-shirts that they sold out?

22:00 Good arms. Yeah, yeah, right. OK, interesting. So I think Jeremy Allen White is a spitting image of Sandra Botticelli. I think the thing that I was going to say is that in addition to the Medici thing, I think what fascinates me about this is that it's a biblical subject that's a biblical subject. But he's fusing it with a palpable sense of the present time.

22:19 And it's not just that these people look like the rulers of Florence, but it's that this whole scene has this slightly theatrical pageant-like quality and you're taken into a world by implication of essentially... Quasi-courtsly masks and these pageants that took place going through the streets of Florence, where I think the Medici themselves would sometimes dress up essentially as the Magi to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany.

22:48 And this is a big, festive, civic moment where people would come out and there'd be hundreds of people in the retinue. That sense of procession and display and social spectacle, I think, is as much the subject of that painting as the ostensible biblical subject. It's a tour de force of portraiture, actually, of the contemporary world.

23:07 This is what contemporary viewers were amazed by. Because, you know, we said before, portraiture quite rare in Italy at this point. Well, he's done 20 or 30 portraits, beautiful portraits, very distinctive features, people at different angles. People were amazed at the quality and quantity of portraiture he produced.

23:24 So this painting, I think, depicts really the Medici at their peak, the peak of their powers in the 1470s. But things were about to go wrong. And before we go to the break, I just want to tell this really remarkable story because it does connect to Sandro Botticelli. As I said, Florence is a plutocracy.

23:43 It's governed by a very small number of very wealthy families. And a number of these families really hate the Medici. And there is one particular family. They're called the Pazzi family. They despise the Medici, and they feel that they should be ruling Florence. Things get a bit godfather at this point.

24:02 They get very godfather, because in the spring of 1478, the Pazzi decide they are going to assassinate Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is effectively ruling Florence, and his younger brother Giuliano, both of them depicted in that picture. And they come up with a plan... And the plan is that they're going to kill them at a banquet on Saturday, the 25th of April, 1478.

24:24 They hire a mercenary, an assassin, an old soldier, and they get ready for the banquet. But Giuliano is ill, so he can't attend the banquet. So they say, well, we can't do it. They have to kill both of them at the same time. Otherwise, the whole thing isn't going to work. And so they make a new plan.

24:42 which is to kill them the following morning at mass because they presume they'll definitely go to the church. Quite controversial to be killing people at mass. Well, indeed. And when they tell this to the assassin, the assassin says, well, I'm not killing anyone in a cathedral. I'll do it outside. Yeah, so they have to rustle up.

24:58 some people. They find two priests who are going to do it. And Sunday morning comes. Giuliano's still not very well, doesn't want to go to church. The Patsy actually go and persuade him to come and they take the two Medici brothers to the cathedral. The mass starts, the doors close, and at the moment when everyone is looking at the altar, they launch the attack.

25:18 So two of them attack Giuliano. They stab him 19 times. He falls to the floor of the cathedral. He bleeds to death. He's a goner. He's gone. Dead. The two priests attack Lorenzo. One of them stabs him in the neck, but Lorenzo manages to escape, hides in the sacristy, the bronze doors close behind him, and the conspiracy fails.

25:40 And over the subsequent days and weeks, the Patsy conspirators are rounded up and they're publicly executed. And Lorenzo the Magnificent commissions Botticelli to paint a picture of their execution on an outdoor wall in Florence, which remains there for 17 years. So this is a fresco. It's painted above the Porta della Dogana, the customs gate.

26:06 So this is, I guess, a sort of old side entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio. And it is fascinating, given everything we've been describing so far, in terms of the way we think about Botticelli, the elegance, the sexiness, that sense of, you know, social spectacle, the finer things in life. And here's this painting of the Patsy conspirators.

26:27 which is quite grisly gruesome, suggests that he's also very willing to do the bidding of Lorenzo. And subsequently, as you say, it's destroyed in, I think, 1494, because that's a moment where, I'm sure we'll get onto this, but it's a very turbulent decade, isn't it? And the Medici are expelled from Florence.

26:44 Yes, we will discuss that in episode two. He also does a portrait, a posthumous portrait, doesn't he, of Giuliano, who we see him in the adoration, but the one who's killed during this Patsy conspiracy moment, the great murder, which I think is now in Washington. Yeah, there are actually a number of versions of it, I think.

27:01 Right. But, Alistair, I think this bloody disaster may just prompt Botticelli to make one of the most charming pictures in history. And that is what we will be discussing after the break. Right. If you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time.

27:23 And a reminder, you can find us on Instagram at storiesofart.henny. So please do follow us, comment and by all means suggest topics for future episodes. Welcome back to Stories of Art. It's the early 1480s. Sandro Botticelli is in his late 30s and at some point around 1482 or so, he completes a painting that really is unlike anything that has been made in Europe for really more than a thousand years.

28:00 And it is, of course, Primavera. Why, Alistair, before we get into it, do you think this painting is so important and so revolutionary? Well, it's a very important thing. Well, it's the first of what we call Botticelli's mythologies. And one of the contexts, I guess, is that in 15th century Florence, and particularly under the rule of, de facto rule of Lorenzo the Magnificent, there's this great resurgent interest in the ancient world.

28:28 And I think that's the context which you've got to see these mythological paintings in. Primavera is, I mean, some of the others, there's The Birth of Venus, there's Venus and Mars, which is an amazing picture, which is in the National Gallery. There's one in the Uffizi, which I think will... I mean, we will definitely be talking about later in this section because it's called Palace and the Centaur and it's relevant to this picture.

28:49 So what he's doing is he is finding excitement and inspiration in antiquity. But he's presenting it in a very, very novel way that feels completely suffused with present day, i.e. 15th century Florentine concerns. Yeah. In the 1470s, 1480s, 90% of panel paintings were Christian in subject, and of the other 10%, the vast majority were portraits.

29:20 So despite the context you're describing, it is extremely, extremely rare to see large-scale, freestanding paintings of effectively pagan subjects. One thing I've never really understood is this is a deeply Christian society, and... Is it, do you think, very controversial for people to be making pagan pictures?

29:41 I think it's very, probably quite avant-garde. It's also highly fashionable within the elite. And that's one of the just, it is a fact, as weird as it sounds, in the intellectual history of Western Europe, that at this moment in the Renaissance, we're moving away from this ultra-religious society to one which is suddenly re-engaging with...

30:04 pagan antiquity. And all of these statues, sculptures are being excavated. We know, for example, that Lorenzo the Magnificent, who's in charge in Florence for much of Botticelli's lifetime, he is a big collector of antiquities. He's collecting the Farnese Cup, which is now in Naples. And he's also a patron to all sorts of intellectuals and scholars.

30:28 There are these Greek scholars who are coming into the city in the 15th century and reawakening ideas connected with Plato, hence this new interest in what becomes known as Neoplatonism. And there's something to do with, I think, a shift from being concerned with end times in the afterlife and shifting focus.

30:47 This is just slight speculation on my part, but Shifting focus to a greater engagement with the now, with the present day and with humanity's potential and capacity and perhaps the individual able to strive and get ahead somehow. That's getting slightly off piece. But all of this is sometimes known as humanism.

31:07 You know, it's this interest in this new sort of education system, a liberal arts education, interested in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, but fundamentally inspired by the model of the ancient world, which has just come back into Vogue. Let's describe the painting itself, Alastair. One of the really interesting things about Primavera is most Western paintings are read from left to right because we read our text from left to right.

31:33 This painting... goes the other way. If you buy that interpretation. Yes. Well, do you not buy it? Well, it's always puzzled me why he would make it read right to left. My theory is that because this is pagan subject matter, he's saying this is a parallel universe. Yeah. The world is different here. Anyway, we're jumping ahead.

31:52 Yeah. Let me describe it from right to left. So on the right, we have this blue male figure with wings and puffed out cheeks. He is the wind god Zephyr. The West Wind. Yes, the West Wind. And he has descended into this enchanted forest, a kind of orange grove. That's significant. And he has grabbed this woodland nymph called Chloris.

32:16 And as he captures her, he transforms her into the goddess of flowers. You can see she's throwing up flowers. Yes, Flora. And actually next to her, we can probably see what she turns into. We can see Flora herself in this wonderful flowery dress, scattering rose petals and flowers all around. As we move into the centre of the picture, we can see another very beautiful woman, also in elaborate clothing.

32:39 She's looking out at us. This is Venus, the goddess of love. And above her is a little Cupid, I think the offspring of Venus, who is blindfolded and firing a flame-tipped arrow towards one of three women dancing on the left of the picture. Now, they, I think, are the three graces. They're often associated and accompanied by, Venus.

33:00 One of them, I think, has already been struck because she's looking very amorously towards a man at the far left of the picture who we know from his winged shoes is the god Mercury, who is busy waving his wand to dispel some clouds. His caduceus is what Mercury would hold. That's the technical name for the wand that he has, entwined with snakes.

33:21 So at a very basic level, I mean, let's begin by exploring what the subject matter of this picture is. It's called, according to Vasari, Primavera. But I mean, it's worth saying, obviously, Vasari's writing way later. So one of the mysteries about this is we don't know what Botticelli would have called it, what his title for it is.

33:39 But yes, it's gone down in history, thanks to Vasari as being called Spring, as if it's an allegory of spring, perhaps the first ever spring that broke within the world. I think that's very persuasive. And one of the things that's really interesting is as you read that picture from right to left, you can actually see spring unfolding chronologically.

33:59 So the west wind that we have on the right of the picture, Zephyr, is associated with March. This is when the west wind arrives in Italy and begins to bring life to nature. As we move left to the middle of the picture, we come to Venus, who is associated with April. That's the month of love. And as we move to the far left, we get to Mercury, who is associated with the month of May, because his mother was Maya, who gave the name to the month of May.

34:26 So as we move through the picture from right to left, we are actually moving through spring. We are moving from March through to April into May. And with his waving away of those clouds, is he perhaps at the very end of the picture saying, there the cloud's gone, it's now summer. Yes. No, it's ingenious.

34:41 I mean, and it is a compelling interpretation for sure. You seem sceptical. Well, only because it's very neat, it's very pat. It feels to me like there's a tremendous amount of other stuff which is going on. I mean, I still am not totally convinced by the topsy-turvy inversion of, you know, Christian world, we'd read it left to right, so because it's pagan world, we'll read it right to left.

35:04 That, for some reason, on an instinctive gut level, just sits slightly awkwardly. I also don't quite understand how, if it's just almost like a simple dramatisation of a rustic calendar, a very sort of erudite, you know, Latinate rustic calendar or poem. And that's one of the theories. There was a guy called Poliziano who was tutor to Lorenzo's son, who's one of the intellectuals in Florence at the time.

35:28 He's often linked to the iconography of Botticelli's mythological paintings. And there's a theory that he's the guy who's actually suggesting, right, do this and that, and that's what it will mean. I don't quite get why Venus is so central. If it's just about seasonal change, there's clearly something else at work.

35:49 I find the figure of Venus fascinating because if you look at her and if we dwell on her for a moment, as you say, she's very beautiful. She is tilting her head. She is dressed. She's not naked. You know, next time we'll be thinking about the birth of Venus where she appears nude and that's highly significant.

36:07 But here she's almost not so much perhaps goddess of love, although clearly she does symbolise that, but a more primitive aspect of Venus as a goddess associated with regeneration of the natural world, with fertility, goddess of gardens. She's dressed in this really high-end fashion. But one of the things about it is that if you look at the trees behind, and I love this idea that I've certainly read people have suggested, there's a sense in which Botticelli is allowing us to see through and there's a bit more light and it creates almost this halo that goes around Venus behind her, that sense of the sky.

36:44 And perhaps even that semicircular shape evokes an architectural feature you often find in churches, a semicircular half-domed apse, And often in those religious paintings that are so common and frequent at the time, as you've said, you would be depicting the Virgin Mary sitting within an apse. And it does feel as though this Venus...

37:10 is somehow meant to register for contemporary viewers as what? Somehow foretelling or fusing on some metaphorical part of the imagination with the Virgin Mary. And if you look at her belly, she appears to be possibly even pregnant. So there's complexity there. You mentioned the orange grove. Oranges were a symbol of the Medici.

37:35 They're oranges. They love their oranges. Suddenly this is feeling as though it's not just a simple celebration of spring, but perhaps there's a more specific local social context or meaning interpretation to the painting. One other thing I wanted to say as well, just in terms of influences and style, is that one of the unusual aspects about this is in many ways it doesn't appear like a quote-unquote early Italian Renaissance painting at all.

38:05 You know, a lot of artists at that moment are really interested in perspective. There isn't really much sense of perspective here. It's incredibly flat. It looks freeze-like. And a lot of people compare this unbelievable profusion of plants and flowers and vegetation everywhere with all of these species that have been identified and made people think that Botticelli's working from these herbariums.

38:28 You know, he's really accurately depicting plants that might have allegorical significance themselves. But the overall effect is very flat-like. and very patterned and decorative, and people compare that to Flemish tapestries of the time. And again, I've already mentioned that the Medici have all of these business links with Northern Europe.

38:48 They're probably buying members of the family of the dynasty Flemish tapestries. They're great luxury status objects, and they're coming to Italy. So that, again, is a bit of a conundrum to me. I think it's deliberately archaic in style because we know that Botticelli, if you look at Botticelli's pictures, he could do perspective.

39:04 He could do, you know, convincing 3D space. He is deliberately producing a work that I think is supposed to look at first sight like a medieval tapestry. But I just, I think that it is such a visual feast, though, this picture. I mean, so many astonishing passages of painting here. For me, the strongest part of the painting are the three graces.

39:26 This is Botticelli at the absolute peak of his powers. Look at how these three figures interact. Look at the play of glances. Look at the way their hands and fingers interlock. Look at the way their feet tiptoe across the grass. Look at the translucent fabric that's rippling in the spring breeze over their flesh.

39:45 It's just so sexy. The sexiness of it, and specifically the fabric, is interesting because I've mentioned this re-engagement with the ancient world as an intellectual context for this painting. Lots of ancient Greek and Roman sculptors recognise that you can animate a nude female by having this play of seemingly diaphanous drapery, their gown, which somehow gives a real frisson, if you like, an erotic charge to a sculpture.

40:13 Yeah. Now, of course, what Botticelli's doing as a painter is he's going one step further. He's taking that conceit. But the diaphanous gown is actually semi-transparent. And you really can see through it, edged in some cases with lots of pearls, probably symbolising purity. So he's having a tremendous amount of enjoyment, I think.

40:33 He is. It's almost as if after a thousand years of Christian restraint and sobriety, Botticelli is ripping off his clothes and saying, come on, let's have some fun. We should really talk about the plants, Alastair. There have been whole books dedicated simply to the botanical details of this picture.

40:48 I think one botanist has found about 500 individual plants. Do you think that's right? Because I noticed that the Uffizi themselves refer to 42 identifiable species. Had you led with that, I would have been impressed. But now the 500 sort of seems like it's 10 times as many. Well, that's right. That's the individual.

41:05 So they say... 500 individual plants, 138 flowers, 42 different species. Right. So there are 55 daisies. There are 46 violets. There are roses. There are carnations. There are cornflowers. There are irises. I wonder whether, I mean, I'm not a botanist, but I wonder whether if that reading of spring unfolding from right to left is...

41:28 is correct. Whether the flowers themselves chart that progress, whether we're having March flowers on the right and April flowers in the middle and May flowers on the left, I don't know. Maybe we've got some botanists who can write in and tell us. I'm afraid I'm not very green-fingered either, so I cannot help on that front.

41:45 But there is, Alistair, another level of meaning to this picture. And it brings us back to the story we told before the break of the Patsy conspiracy, which is why I told that story at such length. So during the 1470s, Lorenzo the Magnificent had been trying to broker a marriage. There's a family living on the coast of Italy called the Appiani family, and they have access to the island of Elba.

42:14 Now, Elba, of course, is famous today for its connections with Napoleon. But back in the day, it was famous for its iron ore, hugely profitable material. And so Lorenzo de' Medici was desperate to try and get access to these mines. And so he had struck a deal to marry his brother, Giuliano, who we saw in that painting, to the teenage daughter of the Appiani family, But in 1478, with the Pazzi conspiracy, Giuliano was murdered, stabbed 19 times, bled to death on the floor of Florence Cathedral.

42:50 So he had to do a switcheroo. He had to find someone else who could marry this girl. And he found his cousin, a guy called Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de' Medici. And he spent quite a lot of time post-Pazzi conspiracy in the 1480s negotiating this marriage, doing the prenups and everything like that. And eventually, in the summer of 1482, although it was scheduled for May 1482... Yeah, spring, spring.

43:14 Spring. Yeah. So they finally marry in July 1482. So the question is, what is the connection to Primavera? Well, the reason it's connected to Primavera is in 1975... a scholar by chance discovered that this painting originally hung not just in the newlyweds' house, but in the bride's bedroom. It was actually originally connected to her bed, which was next to the nuptial chamber.

43:44 And so lots of scholars have presumed that therefore this painting was connected to that wedding and may well have been a wedding gift from Lorenzo the Magnificent to the young bride. So I believe that the Italian term for the specific piece of furniture above which it hung is a letuccio, which is sometimes people refer to as maybe a daybed or a chest with a back.

44:10 And one of the tantalising things about this in light of what we've already been discussing is that traditionally in a noble house, you'd have your letuccio and you might have above it decorated a tapestry. So it does feel... It's such a tantalising idea that Botticelli is deliberately painting the Primavera, which we can assume is perhaps commissioned as a wedding gift to resemble in part a tapestry because he knows where it's going to end up.

44:40 We know in the same room there is this other painting, Palace and the Centaur. And there's this wonderful idea, isn't there, that in the 15th century, what you're starting to find is a lot of nuptial imagery, if you like, that's coming into Italian art. And there is a school of thought, because just to pretty quickly go back one step.

44:59 Scholars, I mentioned at the start of this, all of those sort of 19th century, 20th century scholars who are engaging with Botticelli and becoming obsessed with Primavera, they start to create this whole school of interpretation of the painting that grounds it in something called Neoplatonism. And I don't want to get stuck into what Neoplatonism is because I'm not sure I fully understand it, but it's extremely intellectual and quite dense.

45:22 And so it's very much about operating on a higher rational plane. Yeah. More recently than that, there's been a different generation of art historians, and you're alluding to some of their work, who are more interested in the social context of works of art. And that's what you suddenly see here, this interpretation that situates Primavera in a wider context of pictures, works of art that are being created to celebrate weddings, given as gifts...

45:46 and would have hung in these specific places in these chambers, adjacent to the marital bedchamber in some cases, and possibly are almost like schooling posh Florentine girls in terms of what to expect, what is expected of them, in terms of their social role, what might happen on a wedding night. You know, I said Venus could be pregnant in the middle, you know.

46:07 That's what you, bride, that's what needs to happen to you pretty quickly. Yes, some art historians have claimed that this painting is essentially an instruction manual to the bride, If it is, it's pretty opaque, isn't it? It's harder than an IKEA assembly manual, isn't it? I don't really buy that, but I do think the painting is quite clearly about love.

46:25 And we have on the right a man lusting after a woman. We have on the left a woman lusting after a man. We have Venus, the goddess of love, in the middle, all set within an environment that is all about fertility and fecundity. So it seems to me... Quite persuasive that this picture is supposed to be understood in that context.

46:44 And when you think the young teenage bride, who's gone through a difficult period, she thought she was going to get married to someone else, is this saying to her, as she is getting ready on her wedding night, about to go through to the nuptial chamber to lose her virginity and to consummate that marriage, is it saying to her, look...

47:00 You know, you need to love your husband. You need to produce lots of Medici children. And of course, the context that we've already discussed, which is the orange trees, the orange grove, that is a Medici symbol. They had citrus groves. The coat of arms has these balls, which were probably originally oranges.

47:15 There are laurel trees in the forest as well. Laurel being connected to Lorenzo, the name of the groom, as well as the name of Lorenzo de' Medici. Is this saying to her, you know, you're in the Medici family now, be a good wife? Yes. I also find it really satisfying and persuasive as an interpretation and much more, as I say, than getting into the weeds of the neoplatonic reading of a painting like this.

47:40 I think it's worth, though, also reflecting on the strangeness of that in terms of society's interests in and re-engagement with the ancient world. Because if you say this is about trying to celebrate essentially things like chastity within marriage and fidelity... Why re-engage with pagan antiquity, which is all about rape, free love, multiple partners?

48:01 As you've said, in this one image alone, you have this effective rape that's taking place to the right of the picture. There's Venus who seems to be pregnant in the middle of it. Cupid is about to inflame the middle of the three graces with lust and love for Mercury on the left. Which person is the bride meant to identify with in a sense?

48:22 Well, I think there are some theories that Flora, the woman in the flowery dress, is possibly the bride and Mercury on the left is possibly the groom. Why is he so camp? I know. Do you think he has any relationship, by the way, this is an aside, but with Donatello's famous sculpture of David? Oh, it does.

48:43 It's very similar. To me, it's like Dead Ringer, uncanny. You know, Donatello, major figure in Florentine art. He dies, I think, in the 1460s. But, you know, Botticelli, absolutely aware of his work, you know, sponsored by the Medici. His great statue of the David has the same, what art historians refer to as contrapposto pose, where, you know, the weight is being borne on one leg, gives a bit of a...

49:04 sort of cocked hip and sinuous pose to the structure. He's wearing these very ornate boots, very similar to Donatello's David's boots. And Donatello's David is known for being this great symbol of, it just seems surprisingly effeminate. Nothing like Michelangelo's David, which came later, which we discussed in that series.

49:24 There is also a portrait that Botticelli makes of a young boy who lots of people think is a representation of the groom. And that figure looks very similar to this figure. So it's possible they are... semi-portraits of the couple. But if that's the case, why is the bride, Flora, looking out at us and then it's this middle one of the three graces who, you know, has nothing to do with a bride who's lusting after the groom?

49:48 It seems like not to be a recipe for marital harmony. I'm just saying. Well, you know, one of the funny things about this is that Botticelli himself never got married. And there's actually a wonderful story about this in that Botticelli, at one point, someone came up to him and said, Sandra, why don't you get married?

50:05 And he said, oh, I had a terrible nightmare a few nights ago. Had a nightmare that I was married, woke up in a cold sweat, was so desperate not to get back into that nightmare and be married that I then got up and walked around Florence until daybreak. So Botticelli himself never gets married, probably never has children either.

50:22 Is there anything else you want to say about the picture? Is there anything that's... I mean, you've mentioned palace and the centaur. So this is a painting that's in the Uffizi galleries in Florence. And you see, in this case, two figures. But again, it's the mythological world. There's a woman... with all sorts of foliage which seems to be decorating her dress and across her breasts and around her head.

50:43 She's holding an enormous, ornate battle axe and she's tugging by the hair a centaur, one of those mythological beasts, half human, half animal. with his hooves underneath. And it's classically seen as she's interpreted probably as Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and she's subduing a centaur that often in ancient art is seen as a symbol of man's more bestial instincts, if you like.

51:13 So what we know from that inventory and the work of that art historian that you were mentioning before is that at one stage, Primavera hung in the same room as this. Interestingly, I've come across a theory that the central figure of the three graces who you've been arguing is looking at Mercury maybe is meant to be directing the viewer's attention out.

51:35 out of the picture altogether to this one. And there is an idea that some of these nuptial images that were being painted by artists at the time were meant to be understood as almost like installations, whole ensembles that are working and speaking to each other, which I think is a very sophisticated visual idea that I rather relish.

51:57 I'm picking up a sense, Alistair, that you're not a huge fan of Primavera. No, it's the opposite. I love Primavera. I'm sorry that I've made it sound so colourless. I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful. Do you not like it? I adore it. I adore it. And I think we could go on about it for hours.

52:17 So let's bring this episode to a close. In the next episode, we are going to focus on an even more celebrated picture, one of the most famous in history, the birth of Venus. before discussing a revolution that ripped Florence to pieces and changed Botticelli's life and art in rather unexpected ways. Arrivederci.

52:38 Ciao. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.