Everyone knows in Careggi, a woman reigns over the heart of the master of Florence.
Married to Clarice Orsini, married in 1469 by political ulterior motives, Laurent loves the beautiful Lucrezia Donati.
He loves her with an impossible love, and this wound dictates his finest verses…
“
Amor, ne 'raggi de' begli occhi involto, / Mostra al mio tristo cor la cieca via.
("
The Love, in the skein radiating from his eyes, / Show the blind path to my unhappy heart.
")
Read also In the workshop of the exquisite Botticelli
There is much more to Laurent's poetry than the torments of passion.
For this humanist imbued with Neoplatonism, it is in the enigma of a glance, in the contemplation of the beloved woman, that the secret of the divine is hidden.
He only knows beauty to find his way back in the labyrinth of appearances.
That beauty to glimpse this eternity where awaits her brother prematurely torn from existence.
The love that comes to delight the soul, such is the subject of
Spring
. Botticelli received the order probably on his return from Rome, in 1482, from Laurent the Magnificent, who wanted to offer this gift to his young cousin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, for his marriage to Semiramide Appiani. It is in the villa of Castello, former property of the cousin of the Magnificent, that Vasari will discover the painting at the Cinquecento. For Sandro, this is the long-awaited opportunity to equal the poets. They have the magic of the verb. He has all the power of a vision. With the help of Politien, he created a composition of unheard-of magnitude. First, by its dimensions, three meters long by two meters high. By its theme, above all, which has no equivalent in the history of painting. Sandro, in fact, drew from Horace, Ovid, Boccaccio, from the poems of Laurent, from the works of Alberti.But he refuses to make the servile illustration of a mythological fable. He will create a huge allegory which only those familiar with Careggi will be able to decipher.
Like so many layers of varnish on a canvas, the painter multiplies the meanings. His Venus first of all embodies the love which, from the beginning and from spring to spring, presides over the race of the worlds. Under her long white dress, she shows off the plump belly of a woman in whom life is born. As for the gods who accompany him, they are those of his procession in ancient poems, in Virgil, in Lucretia. Mercury, his eyes turned to the sky, is not here messenger of Olympus, but god of the spring breezes which disperse the seeds. With his caduceus, he drives away the last clouds of winter while the Graces, under their dancing feet, make the earth germinate. Chloris, pursued by the lover Zephyr, further illustrates this fruitful force of nature. Under the ardor of the god of the winds,the nymph changes into Flora, goddess of flowers - a metamorphosis all inspired by Ovid. And Cupid, blindfolded, darts his arrows blindly.
But the Venus of
Spring
also symbolizes the love celebrated in Laurent's sonnets, the love of courtly jousting immortalized by Politien. Botticelli painted the goddesses in the finest outfits, meshed with gold, edged with pearls, as only the elegant ones wore at the time. The woman, the embodiment of sensitive beauty, is the one who hurts with a glance, such Lucrezia Donati, perhaps represented here in the guise of Venus, while Simonetta Vespucci would lend her idealized face to Flore, in memory of Julien, whose she was the muse. Alone between the gods, the two young women, sure of their charms, staring at us insistently. In a garden where laurels recall Laurent's first name while orange trees evoke the Medici shield, it is also the love of a man who declares himself.
Sandro, author of such a masterpiece, singlehandedly embodies the entire Renaissance: drawing inspiration from ancient poets, he was able to express the ideas of his time, an optimism inherited from Marsile Ficino.
In honor of Laurent, he invented a new image of love.
A love that does not pass, despite the disappearance of loved ones - Simonetta, like her lover, has joined the other world.
A love that can be read in the eyes of a woman, and which predicts eternity.
Botticelli had already known many times the bursts of triumph.
This time, no one has words - we still miss them.
But this silence says its glory.
Botticelli, all the beauty in the world, € 12.90 on Figaro Store
Cover of the Figaro Hors-Série dedicated to Botticelli La Belle Simonetta, Botticelli, 1485 (Städel Museum)