Zöllner, Frank: Botticelli: Images of Love and Spring (1998)

are the Three Graces, who frequently appear in the
company of Venus and their guide Mercury. Their airy
white gowns are further confirmation of their identity,
for in both a classical source — Seneca’s De beneficiis (On
Benefits) — and m the art theory of the quattrocento —
in Leon Battista Alberti’s tract On Painting — the Graces
are described as a group of lightly clad, dancing maidens
who create an atmosphere of beauty and charm (Ap-
pendix, nos. 2—3).

Precisely the same configuration of Venus and Amor,
the Three Graces, and Mercury is found in a well-known
ode by the Roman poet Horace. In the second stanza, he
not only describes the same figures but also refers to the
Graces’s loose clothmg (Appendix, no. 4). However,
compared to Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, and
Amor, it is much harder to identify the figures on the
right side of the composition. fiet paintings are made to
be understood, and therefore Botticelli decorated the
young woman stepping forward, to the right of Venus,
with countless symbolic flowers and blossoms. They
cover her gown, adorn her hair and her neckline, encircle
her high waistline, and fill a low fold low on the front of
her dress. They correspond to the equally numerous
flowers in the meadow where the scene is set, and make it
more than likely that this young woman is Flora. This
archaic Italian goddess of flowers and blossoms, of
spring and of “good hope” for women is described to-
gether with Venus, Amor (“Venus’s winged harbinger”),
and another god, Zephyrus, by Lucretius in his philo-
sophical didactic poem De rerum natura (Appendix, no. 5).
Thus Botticelli was also drawing on this source which in
fact links the right and left sides of the composition.

The goddess of spring, Flora, m fact owes her exist-
ence to a metamorphosis. Originally she was a nymph

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