Primavera

Botticelli painted the Primavera around 1480 in Florence, for the Medici, the banking family who effectively ruled the city and surrounded themselves with scholars reviving the ancient world. This is that revival made visible, a garden of classical gods no one had painted at this scale in a thousand years of Christian art. Venus stands at the center, Cupid hovers blindfolded above her, and the three Graces dance to the left. On the right, the blue wind god seizes a nymph who transforms into Flora, the flower-scattering figure beside her. Botanists have counted around 190 different plant species in the meadow, many of them Tuscan flowers that bloom in spring. It was made for a private room, tempera on a wooden panel, meant to be read up close by people who knew the poems behind it.