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

fruit-bearing orange tree and Flora would have made
sense to those for whom the picture was painted. In fact,
in the profane iconography developed for Lorenzo the
Magnificent, there is at least one example of a formally
comparable, significant link between a figure and a tree.
On the reverse side of a portrait medallion of Lorenzo
the Magnificent, attributed to Niccolò Fiorentino, there
is a seated female figure, who personifies the city of Flor-
ence 4 6 (see p. 58). The inscription “Florentia” reveals the
woman’s ldentity, and she is clearly under the protection
of Lorenzo the Magnificent, for the latter is por-
trayed — symbolically — as a laurel tree ( lauro nobilis') ap-
parently growing out of the female figure’s back, and
protectively sheltering her with its branches. The sur-
rounding inscription ( Tutela Patri[a]e) also confirms
Lorenzo the Magnificent as the “protector of the father-
land” — of Florence. Yet, at the same time, the direct
link between the tree-trunk (which does not touch the
ground) and Florentia’s back brings to mind another
thought, namely Lorenzo’s “roots” in Florence, his patria
(native town) which he is seeking to protect. This
combination of a symbolic tree and an allegorical female
figure is certainly comparable with the principle under-
lying the significant connection between Flora and the
orange tree in Botticelli’s La Primavera.

The profane iconography of the Renaissance was
often formally similar to Christian iconography, for
Christian imagery had a tradition going back hundreds
of years, and artists were bound to rely on lt. This may be
seen, for example, in the portraits of women painted in
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries which
drew heavily on conventional representations of the
Madonna, 47 since the Virgin Mary was regarded as the
model for every woman and mother. These comparisons

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