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

Fruit-bearing
orange tree

Medici family.4 2 Their symbolism was based on fact.
Since the fourteenth century, a small orange grove grew
in the courtyard of the old Medici palace, and was
regarded as a kind of barometer measuring the flow of
the family’s history. In the sixteenth century, Giulio de’
Medici (the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent) re-
ferred to the fact that the condition of these trees and
their fertility had always been an omen for the fate of his
family. The inclusion of the orange tree in this painting
was of great sigmficance to the Medici farnily. 43

The connection between the fruit-bearing tree and
Flora with the fruit of the Medici, who had commis-
sioned this work, is carefully constructed on the right
side of the picture, reading from the outer edge towards
the centre. Here again we see the meticulous subtlety of
the artist’s thinking. Zephyrus himself is positioned in
the laurel tree, the lauro nobilis, a clear allusion to the
groom, Lorenzo — in Latin Laurentius — whose name is
visualized here. It is notable that, in the upper right cor-
ner of Botticelli’s picture, there are neither blossoms nor

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