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3

A Very Private Location

THE LOCATION and occasion for commissions such as La Primavera tells us much. If it was a marriage painting (I will seek to show that it was), then a Medici wedding was an occasion of the greatest importance and one which would command a theme relevant to the parties to the marriage and reflective of the gravitas of the occasion. As one explores the enigma which is La Primavera, it is good to recall that nothing in Renaissance painting is ever present by chance.

La Primavera was set above the backboard or spalliera of a day-bed which was placed against a wall in an ante-room to Lorenzo’s room or camera in his private apartments on the ground floor of the old town house or Casa Vecchia.¹ Members of the wider Medici clan, as was normal at the time, lived in close proximity to the principal palace. What Vasari saw seventy years later at the Medici Villa Castello in the Florentine foothills, like today’s viewer at the Uffizi, was a work of art removed from its original and intended context where it had a role to play and a relevance for the owner. Once removed to Castello, its function was purely decorative.

Personal apartments, whether for religious or lay people, could accommodate images considered inappropriate for public viewing. In anticipation of a landmark event such as a wedding, the master’s apartments in a patrician household were elaborately refurbished. This involved the introduction of paintings and painted furniture, the latter a fashion current in the hundred years prior to the 1480s. As we look at La Primavera we should remember that in a painting celebrating a marriage, traditional themes were presented to guide each party. Ancient stories were often adapted and made suitable for the whole household to see.² While such panels often featured classical architecture and pagan figures, they were given a Christian gloss. They generally celebrated the families involved in the marriage through symbolism. Many included family crests and coats of arms, reminding the couple of the political importance of the union.³ The presence of such symbolism in La Primavera will be examined in Chapter 8.

Wedding paintings typically had themes tailored to the parties involved and the stories depicted, more often than not, spanned different eras. Role models and costumes from one period could combine with architecture from another if it served the theme.⁴ ‘Self-fashioning’, where the recipient was painted as a famous figure from antiquity, was part of the tradition, and in a marriage painting it pointedly underscored the expectations the giver entertained for the receiver. Although a painting was all’antica in character, hairstyles and fashion were usually Florentine – costly robes as patrician women and men might wear to a wedding made the theme of the painting more relevant.⁵ Such paintings also reflected great pride in the city state’s Christian and classical origins. Caesar, Judith, Venus and Achilles were favourites, for Florentines were brought up to celebrate their classical and their Christian heritage. What mattered was the role model and the timeless message.⁶

As we look at La Primavera and its classical figures in more or less contemporary costume, and particularly at the central figure, it is worth remembering that the lines of demarcation between ancient and modern, Christian and pagan, and sacred and secular, were not as one might imagine.⁷ Similarly, the façade of Siena Cathedral, a ‘who’s who’ of renowned pre-Christian figures, prominent among whom are Plato and Aristotle, testifies to the esteem in which they were held. All were perceived as presaging Christianity and sharing comparable values. As pointed out by Caroline Campbell, fifteenth-century Florentines did not feel estranged from their ancient forebears. What mattered was that their art could be viewed comfortably through a Christian lens.

The subject matter deemed appropriate to wedding paintings derived largely from ancient sources and was, as pointed out by Paola Tinagli, ‘prescriptive rather than descriptive.’⁸ The pictures had a job to do. Panels frequently depicted Florence and its relationship with ancient Rome. Chivalric tales, mythologies, stories from the Old Testament, and popular tales from Homer, Petrarch, Boccaccio’s Decameron9 and Virgil were also popular. Ovid’s reliably entertaining and risqué stories were adapted to Christian sensibilities. Contrasting ideas were often presented, making the message succinct. This was the Church’s view on art’s role. Stories with themes like the power of love and fidelity were popular, and also those contrasting love and war, where love overcomes the destructive urge (as in Botticelli’s Venus and Mars). Additionally, themes such as the rational versus the irrational or intellect over instinct were in demand.¹⁰ Botticelli’s Pallas and the Centaur, a painting which hung in the same room as La Primavera, is frequently interpreted as representing the triumph of intellect over instinct.¹¹ I will seek to show that Botticelli’s allegory is not ambigious but seamlessly binds together its owner, his mentor, the painter, the concept, its location and a very important marriage.

The following describes the political tragedy and carnage which dominated the lives of those around the painter at the time of La Primavera, the consequences of which gave rise to Lorenzo Minore’s marriage. The excesses of the protagonists in this bitter conflict contrasts dramatically with their shared interest in the sublime Platonically inspired religion of love. For the Medici and the Pazzi, the acute political pressures of the moment overrode their noblest musings and poetic sighings, exposing reliably primal instincts in an atmosphere of expedient gain and realpolitik. These contradictions in man’s essential nature informed the thought of Marsilio Ficino and also Botticelli’s creation.

1 See Appendix 2, page 173.

2 Baskins, The Triumph of Marriage, 2008, p.31.

3 Caroline Campbell, Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, 2009, p.39. ‘Stories from ancient poetry and history were re-written, often with moral and Christian glosses, so that they fitted the needs of their Florentine fifteenth-century users’ (p.33).

4 Ibid., p.33.

5 Ibid., p.42.

6 Ibid., p.39.

7 Ibid., p.38.

8 Humanists had a compendium of moral stories or exempla available to them in Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX. Stories were categorised according to the virtues they exemplified. See Jill Kraye, Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 1996, p.171.

9 The Decameron opens with a description of the Black Death (bubonic plague) which was rife in Florence and killed about half of the population. Boccaccio describes the exploits of a group of seven young women and three young men who flee from the plague-ridden city to a villa outside the city walls. To pass the time, each member of the party tells a story, many of them lewd, on each of the ten nights they spend at the villa.

10 The story of Judith and Holofernes provided an example of a woman saving her city. Michaelangelo’s assertive and capable David denoted the power of right over wrong. Venus denoted love; Mercury the messenger represented reason and was a conduit to the spiritual dimension ‘above’, in the Platonist’s higher mental plane. Valour, prudence and wisdom all had their mythological representatives. The marriage of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba showed not just a wedding occasion, but that even the Queen of Sheba bows to her husband’s wisdom. The choice of characters said much about a patron’s intent.

11 Pallas/Camilla/Minerva. Pallas Athene has no association with a centaur which is associated with the lustful and instinct driven nature.