Spring

Actually, I can’t determine which artwork is my favorite. Maybe is most confortable to me talk my favourites painters - as I’ve done –, but is hard to say that you like above all things some artwork, because you have to identify with it at all.

Anyway, I’ll talk about “Allegory of Spring” or “Spring”, painted ca. 1482 by Sandro Botticelli. I don’t consider it my favorite masterpiece but I find it a beautiful painting. I think is an interesting picture created in an interesting context. Botticelli is one of the most famous painters of the Renaissance in Italy and he did this work for the powerful Italian Medici family.

“Spring” is a representation of the humanistic culture and, I think, is above all, one of the most brilliant artworks that represent the Neoplatonism phylosophy. Neoplatonism was a revival of clasics ideas, which based in teachings of Plato and Aristotle mainly and all antique culture believer in the Unit as the source of all things, the Intelligence and Knowledge as maximum aspiration and the Soul as universal principle.

"Sping" ended with traditional catholic representation of this station of the year and everything associated with it (love, enyoiment, blossom, harvest, daintiness, grace, beauty, fertility, sensuality, etc.), because Botticelli made it as a pagan ritual with a particular style and confronting the artistic thinking in his period (S. XV).

It has been said that the picture mainly is an allegory of love. Is a representation, with natural human size, of classics characters (as gods and nymphs) with complex philosophical symbolisms, requiring a deep knowledge of Botticelli sources of classic literature and mithology, humanistic and religious atmosphere of that time for interpret it.

I like a lot how Botticelli painted details of all particular things that integrate the picture with harmony, and the level of his brush when he represent perfectly the daintiness and grace with his colors and shapes.