Ep. 16: Botticelli's Primavera

The Italian Renaissance Podcast

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The name Sandro Botticelli is inseparable from a rich visual vocabulary of mythological subjects, abstract bodies, and an achieved pictorial aesthetic that diverts the mind from the vast complexities of his work. Yet, when we dive deep and look close, his works demonstrate a series of compound interpretations that render them often puzzling and difficult.
Looking at his Primavera, this discussion unpacks several interpretations of the painting, looking at the literature around the subjects, and trying to place them in a specific historical time and context that gives a series of possible meanings to the work. We must also discuss questions of patronage, and how a work of art can give convincing clues as to its origin. All of this relates to cultural attitudes around paganism, Christianity, eroticism and marriage in Renaissance Italy.
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