Tea at Trianon: The Enigma of Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 20, 2021

The Enigma of Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’

From Medium:

The painting was created around the 1470s and supposedly commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici, a wealthy Italian statesman and enthusiastic art patron, probably for the marriage of his cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Primavera portrays nine mythological figures positioned around an orange grove that might reflect the family tree of the Medici family.
To the far left of the painting is Mercury, clothed in red, wearing winged shoes and the caduceus he uses to dissipate the clouds.
Next to Mercury, are the Three Graces (dancing figures), adorned in a translucent white and represent beauty and purity.
The center of the composition is the Roman goddess, Venus, a red-draped woman.
In the air, above Venus, is cupid who is blindfolded and aims his arrow to The Three Graces.
To the extreme right of the painting is Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, chasing the nymph Cloris.
Botticelli shows the spilling of flowers from Cloris’s mouth who transforms into Flora, the goddess of spring.
(Read more.)