The painting was located at the end of the fifteenth century in the house on Via Larga belonging to the heirs of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent; it hung above a "lettuccio" (a type of chest-bench with a backrest that was characteristic of the furnishings of Renaissance noble residences); It was later transferred to the Villa di Castello, where Giorgio Vasari described it in 1550 together with the The Birth of Venus.
Known by the conventional title Primavera (Spring), the artwork celebrates love, peace, and prosperity, although the complex meaning of the composition remains mysterious. The painting depicts nine figures from classical mythology advancing across a flowered meadow before a grove of orange and laurel trees: in the foreground on the right, Zephyrus embraces and impregnates the nymph Chloris, who is depicted a little further on in the guise of Flora, goddess of flowering; at the centre of the composition, slightly set back, are Venus (the goddess of love and beauty), modestly clothed, and Cupid, portrayed blindfolded as he shoots his arrow of love; on the left, the Three Graces (benevolent minor deities associated with Venus) dance in a circle, while Mercury (the messenger of the gods) wearing a winged helmet and sandals, concludes the composition by touching a cloud with his caduceus. The space behind the figures is dominated by a dense grove of orange trees, in bloom and laden with fruit: the trees are arranged in a row and almost all on the same plane, and behind the figure of Venus a myrtle plant can be identified; below stretches a vast meadow in which scholars have counted 190 different flowering plants, identifying 138 of them: these are generally flowers typical of the Florentine countryside that bloom between March and May.
Primavera is a complex painting, rich in literary and philosophical references, clearly intended for an elite and highly cultivated audience. Throughout the twentieth century, extensive iconographic studies attempted to uncover its meaning, proposing numerous interpretative hypotheses; however, even today, no explanation is considered definitive. According to some historians, the subject owes much to the Florentine literary environment dominated by the poet Agnolo Poliziano and takes the form of an allegory of youth, the age of love and reproduction, the happiest season of life but also the one that passes most quickly: the Three Graces dancing would therefore represent an allegory of the passage of time. According to others, however, the painting carries a far more contemplative meaning of an entirely different nature, linked to the Neoplatonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino: the scene would represent the advent of the Kingdom of Venus, understood as a moment of intellectual and spiritual flourishing, in which the goddess serves as an allegory of the virtuous intellectual activities that elevate humanity from the senses (represented by Zephyrus-Chloris-Flora), through reason (the Graces/Hours), to contemplation (Mercury).
It is interesting to note that art historians heavily suspect that the figures in Sandro Botticelli's "Primavera" were modelled after real-life icons of the Medici court. The central face of Venus is widely believed to be Simonetta Vespucci, famously celebrated as the most beautiful woman in Renaissance Florence. Simonetta tragically died of tuberculosis at age 22, years before the painting was completed. Botticelli was so profoundly haunted by her likeness that he continued to paint her face from memory for the rest of his career, even requesting to be buried at her feet in Florence's Ognissanti Church.
