Under the Guise of Spring

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Eugene - Lane Spollen. Under the Guise of Spring

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Acknowledgements

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With the door thus ajar, the light of a pagan sun warmed the cold grey flagstones when they knelt. The ancient sources were accepted by the Church Fathers as presaging the coming of the new religion and were welcomed as its historical justification.31 In the Renaissance, pagan mythology became a vehicle for the expression of ancient concepts which were progressively Christianised. André Chastel, on the subject of using one subject to symbolise another, wrote, ‘The use of double meanings became a common practice, as natural in the handling of images as the devising of iconographic programmes’32 Thus in the Renaissance a visual language expressive of a new manner of thinking served to span concepts and epochs. Fuelled by confirming interpretations of fable and mythology, the line between the two became indistinct to the point that ‘Christian dogma no longer seemed acceptable in anything but an allegorical sense.’33 Christian and Platonic sources became interchangeable. When we come to decipher the figures in La Primavera, in particular the central figure who dominates it, this point will emerge as central.

Some progress in understanding La Primavera has been made, though we have no commissioning document or confirmed patron (see Appendix 2, page 173). One has to rely on a multitude of sources including the private correspondence of the scions of the Medici family, speeches, tax records, marriage documents, commercial contracts, the visual language of the time, religious symbolism, marriage culture, and the everyday metaphors in the writings of the Medici circle.

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