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"Mi Primavera," My Springtime, how well her father's pet name suited her! John wondered why he had not transferred it to her when she told him the story of the naming of Spring street. "Do tell us, Mr. Carrillo," he begged. "Consuello has already told me how Spring street was named. Old stories, old homes, the old names of old streets charm me."
There is more poignant music in the Primavera, in the weary, indifferent countenances of his lean, neuropathic Madonnas Pater calls them "peevish" in his Venus of the Uffizi, than in the paintings of any other Renaissance artist. The veils are there, the consoling veils of an exquisite art missing in the lacerated realistic holy people of the Flemish Primitives.
"The story you told to me of how it received its name," he said. "And do you know why?" Again she shook her head. "Because you are to me 'Mi Primavera' My Springtime."
The visit to Rome was in 1481, and meantime Botticelli had produced the wayward Primavera, and the more stern and harsh S. Augustine in the church of Ognissanti.
The cornflowers and daisies on the Hour's dress are alone a perennial joy. Simonetta as Venus has some of the wistfulness of the Madonnas; and not without reason does Botticelli give her this expression, for her days were very short. In the "Primavera," which we are to see at the Accademia, but which must be described here, we find Simonetta again but we do not see her first.
Then Love, after they had passed, explained the hidden meaning of the name Primavera, and said, that, by one considering subtilely, Beatrice would be called Love, on account of the great resemblance she bore to him. Then Dante, thinking over these things, wrote this sonnet to his friend, believing that he still admired the beauty of this gentle Primavera:
And amid all the beauty of Rome in the spring, I was haunted by the grim refrain, "Nella primavera si combatte e si muore, o soldato," "In the springtide men fight and die, young soldier." I went away from Rome strengthened in my previous judgment that the Italians are not a militarist nation. There was no sign of the militarist, as distinct from the military, spirit at the Bersagliere Depôt.
They were not in the least like the Correggios and the Guidos, the Lawrences and the Opies, that the men of that time had formed their taste upon, and accepted as their sole artistic standards. To people brought up upon pure David and Thorvaldsen, the Primavera at the Belle Arti must naturally have seemed like a wild freak of madness.
Michelangelo The David The tomb of Julius A contrast Fra Angelico The beatific painter Cimabue and Giotto Masaccio Gentile da Fabriano Domenico Ghirlandaio Fra Angelico again Fra Bartolommeo Perugino Botticelli The "Primavera" Leonardo da Vinci and Verrocchio Botticelli's sacred pictures Botticini Tapestries of Eden.
The so-called Primavera was painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, and in some vague way seems to have been inspired by Poliziano's verses in praise of Giuliano de' Medici and Bella Simonetta "Candida è ella, e Candida la vesta, Ma pur di rose e fior dipinta e d'erba: Lo innanellato crin dell' aurea testa Scende in la fronte umilmente superba.
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