BOTTICELLI'S "PRIMAVERA" AS AN ALLEGORY OF ITS OWN CREATION

Author(s): Paul Barolsky

Source: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 14-19
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23204891
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 BOTTICELLI'S PR1MAVERA AS AN ALLEGORY OF ITS OWN CREATION

Paul Barolsky

Ever since Aby Warburg first fully glossed
Botticelli's enchanting Primavera by asso
ciating it extensively with specific passages
from classical and Tuscan poetry, art his
torians have echoed his analysis (Fig. I).1
Over and over again, they have shown that
Botticelli's lyrical painting is saturated with
poetic allusions—from Ovid, Lucretius,
and Horace through Dante and Petrarch to
Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano. If, how
ever, we step back from the specific analy
sis of texts in relation to the Primavera or
from controversies concerning Botticelli's
particular contemporary sources, we might
pause to ask ourselves: What are the gener
al implications of this poetic allusiveness;
what do Botticelli's adaptations of poetry
tell us about the painting's significance that
we have previously failed to consider? As I
will try to indicate in what follows,
swers to these questions suggest that Botti
celli's painting not only illustrates poetry,
but it is about poetry as such, about the
making of poetry. The Primavera can be
seen as an allegory of art—indeed, an alle
gory of its own creation.
Since Botticelli s painting is a poesia
rooted in Tuscan love poetry, as it is justly
said time and again, let us reflect for a mo
ment on some of the conventions of that
poetry and what these conventions suggest
about Botticelli's painted poetry. In the
poetry of Dante, Petrarch, Lorenzo de'
Medici, and Poliziano, the poet first be
holds his beloved in the spring of the year,
when, transfigured or transformed by her
grace and beauty, he falls in love with her.
The poetry is the record of that experience
of love described in the language of earlier
love poetry. The self-consciousness of this
poetry has to do not only with the poet's
memory of his experience in love, but with
his own poetical record of that experi
ence—with his own poetic transformation
of earlier poetry.
This poetical self-consciousness is ex
plicit, for example, in Lorenzo de' Medici's
Commento on his sonnets, where he refers
to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to Ovid,
and
Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius; but it is
no less evident in the poetry itself, where
the conventions of an earlier classical and
Tuscan poetry are creatively reworked. Out
of this tradition, the poet seeks to create a
cosa nuova or novita. Employing the lan
guage of dolcezza, vaghezza, leggiadria,
the an and other terms used
grazia, belta, by pre
vious poets to describe their beloved, the
poet attempts to utilize this conventional
ized language in a novel way, transforming
it and putting the stamp of his own virtu on
this poetic tradition—and thus giving form
to himself as a poet. Highly autobiographi
cal, this poetry is very self-reflexive. What
more personal story is there to tell than that
of how one fell in love—unless, of course,
we mean the story that the poet tells us of
how he writes this poetry? In Tuscan po
etry, the poet is forever telling and retelling
us implicitly how he writes his poetry out of
his poetic sources.
In like fashion, Botticelli s painting al
ludes, as his scholars have explained, to
this earlier poetry. But whereas Dante, Pe

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 15

trarch, Poliziano, and Lorenzo de' Medici
described their exalted visioni in words,
often likened to painted images, Botticelli
demonstrates his "art" by making such a
vision visible. Transforming a phrase of
Dante's, we can say that Botticelli's makes
parlare visibile. For the first time in the
history of Tuscan love poetry, Botticelli, in
his image of Venus, Flora, and the Graces
(to whom the beloved is often likened in
words), allows us actually to see the ap
pearance of the donna angelicata, and this
epiphany, truly novel, occurs in a nuova
poesia visiva, Botticelli's own form
dolce stil nuovo.
Botticelli, who translates or transforms
words into images, demonstrates the self
consciousness of his art throughout the
painting. His metamorphosis of Chloris into
Flora is not the only such metamorphosis in
Florentine art, but it is one of the earliest, if
not the earliest, on such a large scale.
Moreover, it differs in significant respects
from other such representations as Pol
laiuolo's relatively small painting of Apollo
and Daphne. Whereas the latter depicts a
single moment of metamorphosis frozen in
time—the instant when Apollo clutches
Daphne and her body begins to take on the
form of a laurel—Botticelli suggests the
gradual process of metamorphosis through
of time. He does this, for example, by first
showing the silhouettes of flowers through
the veil of Chloris's dress, only faintly sug
gesting the form that these flowers will take
when they eventually adorn Flora's dress.

Fig. 1 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera. Uffizi, Florence

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 16

When Botticelli paints the flowers flow have been

deceived by visual arguzie or
ing from the mouth of Chloris and becom witticisms.In a variation on this theme of
ing those of Flora, he depicts an ambiguity metamorphosis, Botticelli painted a brooch
that also heightens our sense of the process between the breasts of Venus in his Mars
of transformation. The flowers that pass be and Venus that connects her golden braids
tween the fingers of Chloris's outstretched to the golden border of her dress in such a
left hand are also now the flowers of way that it almost appears as if he had
Flora's vestment (Fig. 2). Several of these metamorphosed the golden locks of the
flowers are seen as both painted on Flora's goddess into the golden trim of her vest
garment and as curling through space ment.
around Chloris's fingers. They are beheld Botticelli also encourages us to see his
ambiguously as both the "real" flowers of poetic inventiveness in the telling of his
Flora and the "painted" flowers of her story of Chloris's transformation into
dress—that is, to use the language of Tus Flora. He illustrates the myth from Ovid's
can poetry, una vesta di fiori dipinta. In Fasti, according to which Chloris was
fact, the ambiguous play between "real" transformed into Flora when she became
and "painted" flowers intensifies our sense the bride of Zephyr. Whereas Ovid does not
of the painter's witty artifice since the describe the transformation, Botticelli does,
"real" flowers, like the "painted" flowers, and, when he visualizes this metamorpho
are, of course, also painted. Again adapting sis, he does so by alluding to Ovid's de
the language of the Tuscan poets, we can scription of Apollo and Daphne. In other
say that, in contrast to the "real" flowers, words, he metamorphoses one Ovidian
Botticelli has "painted painted flowers" on source into another—a very Ovidian thing
Flora's dress—dipinti fiori dipinti. to do since Ovid himself does this, for ex
This ambiguita between art and nature ample, in transforming the story of Apollo
draws our attention to the painter's very and Daphne into that of Pan and Syrinx.
role inthe metamorphosis of art. Such arti For Ovid, as his close readers have always
fice is typical of Botticelli's painting. De understood, metamorphosis is a metaphor
picting the Grace adjacent to Venus, he for poetic transformation, and this is so for
paints a bejeweled brooch as if it were sus the Ovidian Botticelli, who, painting a
pended from a necklace formed from her metamorphosis, exhibits the virtu of his
braided hair (Fig. 3). This necklace is ap own artistic transformation.
parently fictive, the figment of Botticelli's In Tuscan love poetry, we noted, spring
witty imagination, the cunning transforma is the time of rebirth, both spiritual and
tion of hair ostensibly into jewelry. Upon physical, when the earth is transformed
closer observation, however, we discover anew and the poet is transfigured by his
that Botticelli has seemingly suspended the beloved. The poet demonstrates his own
brooch instead from an exquisitely fine gold ingegno by describing both the metamor
necklace that was not initially noticed. But, phosis of nature and the transformation of
no, this delicate gold necklace turns out, himself—doing this, as we also observed,
upon closer inspection, to be the border of by transforming the conventions of previous
the Grace's dress. Fooled or ingannati by poetry. In the root sense of poetry—of po
Botticelli's apparent metamorphoses—his esis as "making"—the earth is made anew
trasformazioni finte—we realize that we or reborn, and the poet's words, which

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 17

Fig. 2 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (detail of Chloris). Uffizi, Florence

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 18

Fig. 3 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (detail of a Grace). Uffizi, Florence

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speak of his parallel re-creation, give form
to this transformation or regeneration. In
other words, poetry as a kind of "making"
or giving form is seen implicitly as a re
flection of this refashioning of nature.
When the poet writes of this rebirth, cele
brating his own rebirth, he also extols the
rebirth of poetry in his own words. The
poetry of love is as much about poetry as it
is about love, and Botticelli's Primavera is
as much about the painter's poetry, his own
poesis or "making" of art, as it is about
love. The metamorphosis of Chloris into
Flora is emblematic of the metamorphosis
of Botticelli's art, which transforms words
into images.
1 he mystery ot Mora who appears in an
spiphany in Botticelli's painting is the
'epiphany" of the visive poetry that gives
form to Flora. We cannot gaze upon Flora
ind her entourage without marveling at the
1. The vast scholarship on Botticelli's
is conveniently surveyed with extensive
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iy
poetry that "makes" or gives visual form to
her—that is, Botticelli's poetry. The Prim
avera not only illustrates a metamorphosis,
it is such a metamorphosis; in other words,
the metamorphosis it depicts also self-con
sciously illustrates the artistic transforma
tion of words into images. Painting a
metamorphosis, Botticelli calls attention to
his own role as the poet who "makes" this
double metamorphosis. Doing so, he causes
us to see that he has translated and thus
transformed the conventions of Tuscan po
etry into a new form. Considering Botti
celli's painting in relation to the conven
tions that inspired it, we see that the Prim
avera, as the illustration of a metamorpho
sis that stands for creation, is thus about
the creative metamorphosis of art and, as
such, is implicitly an allegory of its own
poetic creation.
NOTE
Primavera phy by R. W. Lightbown,Sandro Botticelli, 2 vols.
(London: 1978).
bibliogra