Under the Guise of Spring: The Message Hidden in Botticelli's Primavera

Botticelli’s 500-year-old masterpiece, La Primavera, was painted at a time when Florence aspired to become the cultural successor to Athens and Rome. In 1460, the discovery of a Greek-language manuscript from a pagan prophet of Christianity inspired an intellectual elite, including tutors to the Medici owner of La Primavera. In seeking to defend and strengthen their Church, this elite sought to fuse the “religions of the book” with their pre-Christian foundations. This unorthodox objective was their all-consuming preoccupation at the time of La Primavera’s painting. Under the Guise of Spring takes the reader into a deeper understanding of what went on in the early Renaissance, why there was a love affair with Platonism, why people of the time felt they could fuse the three Abrahamic religions, and why they considered it urgent to do so. Though painted a decade before renewed religious zealotry, a prudent tradition of veiling the unorthodox was adopted. Botticelli’s disguise, clearly visible, carried a heretical reminder exclusively for the eyes of the young Medici “prince” in his private apartments. La Primavera’s mystery, primarily a battle about genre—politics, spring, romance, the Medici golden age—is resolved and revealed in this thoroughly researched book.