Art critic Marina Khaikina and psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin examine one painting and tell us about what they know and what they feel. What for? So that, (not) agreeing with them, we are more clearly aware of our own attitude towards the picture, the plot, the artist and ourselves.
“Spring” by Sandro Botticelli (1478, Uffizi Gallery, Florence) is one of the most famous works of the Italian Renaissance. The painting was commissioned by Duke Lorenzo Medici on the occasion of the wedding (according to another version, the birthday) of his nephew. All the heroes depicted on it are mythological characters. In the center is the goddess Venus, to her left are the three Graces (Beauty, Chastity and Pleasure) and their leader Mercury. On the right – the god of the warm, spring wind Zephyr, overtaking the nymph Chloris, and the goddess of flowers Flora. What relationship are they in? What connects them? And why did Botticelli need all these heroes to talk about spring – a symbol of new life, love?
“This is the dialectic of love embodied in movement”
Marina Khaikina, art critic: “The picture was created according to the laws not of dramaturgy, but of musical-rhythmic. And therefore it is very difficult to tell what is happening here, to build a plot. But let’s try. On the right side of the picture, we see two events at the same time: the abduction of the nymph Chloris by Zephyr and her subsequent transformation into the goddess Flora, who symbolizes spring.
However, the central position in the picture is not Flora, but another heroine – Venus. She is not just the goddess of love and beauty. The Neoplatonists, with whose ideas Botticelli was well acquainted, endowed Venus with the highest virtues – intelligence, nobility, mercy, and identified with Humanity, which was synonymous with culture and education.
Движение Венеры едва заметно, но направлено оно от любви земной, олицетворяемой Флорой, к любви небесной, которую символизирует, судя по всему, Меркурий. Его поза, жест указывают на то, что он является проводником к Разуму, царящему в небесных сферах. Его рука рядом с плодом, висящим на дереве, — мотив, традиционно ассоциировавшийся с Древом Познания.
It is very likely that Botticelli illustrated here the Neoplatonic dialectic of love – the path from earthly love to divine love. Love, in which there is not only joy and fullness of life, but also the sadness of knowledge and the seal of suffering – we cannot but see it on the face of Venus. In Botticelli’s painting, this dialectic of love is embodied in the musical, magical rhythm of movement, dance, sometimes fading, sometimes accelerating, but infinitely beautiful.
“A hymn to living human attraction”
Andrey Rossokhin, psychoanalyst: “There are only two men in the picture, their images are fundamentally different. Zephyr (he is on the right) is a dark and terrible, demonic tempter. Mercury (left) is narcissistically handsome. But it is Zephyr, alive and moving, who touches the woman and looks at her (none of the characters in the picture have direct eye contact anymore).
But Mercury has turned away from everyone and contemplates the sky. According to the myth, at this moment he disperses the clouds. He seems to want to get rid of what moves the clouds – from the wind. But the Wind is just the Zephyr that seduces Chloris. Mercury is trying to free space from the movement of wind and life, from the sexual attraction of a man to a woman.
There are three Graces next to him, but there is no physical connection between him and the girls: the grace of Pleasure stands with her back to Mercury. The gaze of Chastity is turned to Mercury, but there is no contact between them either. In a word, in this whole group there is no hint of the awakening of Spring, sexuality.
But it is this group that Venus blesses. She is here not the goddess of love, but the Christian symbol of the Mother, the Madonna. There is nothing feminine and sexual in her, she is the Goddess of spiritual love and therefore is favorable to the left group, devoid of sensuality.
And here is what we see on the right: Zephyr takes Chloris by force, and the nymph girl turns into a woman, Flora. And what happens then? Flora no longer looks at Zephyr (unlike Chloride), she is not interested in a man, she is interested in flowers and children. Chlorida was a mortal girl, and the goddess Flora gained divine immortality. It turns out that the idea of the picture is this: you can be immortal and omnipotent only by renouncing sexuality.
On a rational level, the symbolism of the picture encourages us to feel the greatness and divinity of motherhood, the narcissistic confidence of Mercury, the self-sufficiency of our inner Graces. Botticelli calls to curb his “wild” desires, attractions that are associated with Zephyr, to abandon them and thus gain immortality. However, unconsciously he writes the opposite, and this is evidenced by the very atmosphere of the picture.
We live together with Zephyr and Chloride their passionate love affair, literally feeling with our skin that only such sexual attraction can break the vicious circle of Graces and release pleasure from the narcissistic trap.
To be alive, mortal, feeling, to experience different experiences (fear and pleasure), even at the cost of renouncing Divine immortality – in my opinion, this is the main hidden meaning of Botticelli’s message. A hymn not to the Divine, rational, symbolic and chaste, but to a living human attraction that conquers narcissism and the fear of one’s own mortality.
Sandro Botticelli (Italian Sandro Botticelli, Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (1445-1510) – the great Italian painter of the early Renaissance, a representative of the Florentine school of painting.