La Primavera (or Spring) and The Tree of Death and Life - Essay Example

THIS IS A DRAFT. THE FINAL VERSION WILL BE AVAILABLE IN FOUR HOURS AS THE NEEDS ADDITIONAL RESEARCH TO BE COMPLETED. THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING. Students name Professors name Course number 16 April 2015 Comparative Analysis of the Greek conception of the Garden of Hesperides and the Christian Idea of Paradise as Exemplified by Sandro Botticelli and Berthold Furtmeyrs paintings In this essay I will focus on the painting titled as La Primavera (or Spring) by Sandro Botticelli and the painting titled as The Tree of Death and Life by Berthold Furtmeyr within the context of the ancient Greek mythology and the concepts of Christianity related to the idea of paradise dwelling on the meaning of love in both cases as well. Within the framework of this essay I will try to find the similarities and differences between the Greek conception of the Garden of Hesperides and the Christian idea of paradise as exemplified by Sandro Botticellis painting embracing the Greek mythology and Berthold Furtmeyrs painting exploiting the biblical themes related to the Garden of Eden. Let me start with the well-known painting La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli first and then proceed to the Berthold Furtmeyrs The Tree of Death and Life followed by the comparative analysis of the themes employed by the painters in their masterpieces. La Primavera was painted by Sandro Botticelli during the Renaissance era in 1482 (Hayle n. p.). Visiting the famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where Botticelli masterwork is housed, one cant help how huge the painting is. La Primavera is more than two meters high and all the figures of stunning beauty depicted in the painting are human scale (Hayle n. p.). There are two men at the left and right sides of the painting, six women and a blindfolded Cupid, who is floating above and ready to release an arrow from his bow. All the figures depicted in the painting are a part of ancient Greek mythology. The creation of the painting is inspired by the ancient Roman poetry that embraced Greek and Roman mythological overtones, such as Ovids poem Fasti or Lucretius poem titled as On the Nature of Things (Brown n. p.). It was in sync with cultural trends of the Renaissance era that employed classical Roman and Greek myths to overcome a certain crisis of artistic ideas of the Middle Ages. Botticellis masterwork implies poetic allegory embracing the theme of love and a certain philosophical meaning as it depicts the Garden of Hesperides, which I will dwell on in more detail below. The plot of the painting is being developed from right to left. There is an ominous figure with wings and swollen cheeks dressed in a greenish flowing cloak in the upper right corner of the painting. His name is Zephyrus and he is a symbol of the wind. One can see how the trunks of trees bent influenced by the flight of this mysterious figure. A scared nymph named Chloris, to the left from Zephyrus, tries to run away touching another woman on the left as if asking her for protection. But the woman neglects the nymph, who tries hard to flee from the wind on the right from her, and is walking to the bottom of the painting. It must be noted that this woman in a long dress embroidered with flowers, with a thin face that registers no emotion and a wreath on the golden hair is depicted in the aforementioned Ovids poem Fasti that Botticelli was inspired with when creating his masterpiece. In Ovids poem she is referred to as Spring but, as a matter of fact, this woman might as well be the goddess of flowers and plants, Flora. In the Botticellis painting she had a dress embroidered with red and blue cornflowers, symbols of amiability and good nature, and scattered roses, which was the usual thing for rich Florentine weddings. The wreath around her neck is made of strawberries that symbolize tenderness, chamomile, which is a symbol of loyalty, and a buttercup that symbolizes wealth (Fisher). These three figures in the picture, Zephyrus, Chloris and Flora, create a subplot that illustrates an ancient Greek myth. It is a story about a spring wind Zephyrus, whose love to the nymph Chloris turned her into the goddess of flowers and blossom. One can see flowers growing from her mouth, which symbolizes true love. She is under way of turning into Flora, who is the next figure in the painting from the left. Flora neglects Chloris and tries to put aside her past and the bitterness of her love story that has changed her very self forever. Flora has a stunning new look and is dressed in lush robes. The patterns embroidered on her dress turn into real flowers. Although she does not look happy, her face is gleaming with tranquil contentment. According to the myth Zephyrus possessed Chloris against her will but then married her. As has been already mentioned, after the marriage Chloris turned in Flora. In order to tell this story in his painting Botticelli used the technique of simultaneity, under which consecutive events are to be depicted simultaneously. All of these three figures represent the first month of spring and the first whiff of Zephyrus marked the beginning of it. The next figure from the left placed in the center of the painting is the goddess of love, Venus. She stands under the arch of myrtle and laurel in the middle of orange groves, where oranges symbolize chastity. While Venus is an embodiment of love that spring brings to people, her blindfolded son, Cupid, floating above her with a bow might be a symbol of the imponderables of future events when love is involved. As love does not only imply joy and abundant life, but also the sadness of knowledge and suffering, the sign of which one cant help but see on the face of Venus. She has a veil of a married woman and her right hand is frozen in a gesture that might mean a blessing of those who love each other and are going to get married. Her veil is an allusion to the actual marriage of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, who was the nephew of Duke Lorenzo Medici. Duke Medici ordered the creation of La Primavera painting. Venus and Cupid make up the semantic center of the picture, which tells the story of love. Cupid points his arrow into one of the three Graces, which are placed on the left from Venus. These Graces are Venus inseparable companions in Greel mythology. They symbolize the second month of spring, April. They hold the hands of each other in the dance of life and delight. However, there is no doubt that Venus is the key figure of the painting, and even the trees on the background make the lane for her. Neoplatonic philosophers, the ideas of which Botticelli was in sympathy with, believed that Venus was much more than just the goddess of love and beauty. They endowed her with the supreme dignity and believed that she was the embodiment of reason, mercy and generosity. For Neoplatonists Venus was the embodiment of Humanity and a synonym of culture and education (Cunningham and Reich n. p.). According to Snow-Smith, in this painting Botticelli illustrated the neoplatonic dialectic of love, which was the moving from the earthly love, which Flora embodied, to the divine love, which personified by Mercury standing in the far left corner of the painting (33). The composition of the nine figures shown in the painting implies at least two poetic allegories. One of them represents the wind, spirit and reason that are personified in Zephyrus, Venus and Mercury, and another one symbolizes love, nature and blossom, identified with Cupid, Flora, Chloris and three Graces. Thus, the reason and love in the painting serve as the beginning and the main source of knowledge within the concept of neoplatonic philosophy of Florentine contemporaries of Botticelli that he is believed to use in his painting (Snow-Smith 16). Mercury is the last but not the least important figure of the painting, the plot of which develops from right to left, as was mentioned above. He was the son of the nymph named Maia, which Latin for May, a month when the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco took place. Mercurys hand is pointed to the sky. With the help of the caduceus made of braided snakes he scatters the clouds. On the other hand, his gesture might symbolize that he strives to the reason and wisdom that can be found in heaven. And his hand next to the fruit that is hanging from the tree is contemplation to the motif that is traditionally associated with the Tree of Knowledge, which brings us back to the theme of the Garden of Hesperides where all of the personages of the painting are located. The Garden of the Hesperides is a counterpart of the Garden of Eden, which was a Christian concept of paradise. What makes both of these mythological places similar is the apple tree or trees that grow in these gardens. According to the Greek mythology, there was an apple tree in the Garden of Hesperides that had golden apples on it. The one who ate this fruit would become immortal and live forever. In the collective mind of ancient Greeks the golden apple also symbolized a temptation of love. According to the ancient myth the apple tree of the Garden of the Hesperides was guarded by the nymphs named Hesperides. Although Zeus, the paramount god in the Greek mythology, did not allow Hesperides to touch the apples, the nymphs picked some of the apples by chance. After that Hera, the wife of Zeus, put a dragon named Ladon in the Garden of the Hesperides to keep an eye on both Hesperides and the golden apples. Some researchers like Suzanne Phillips believe that instead of the golden apples there were oranges in the Garden of the Hesperides (n. p.). And those oranges were the fruit that granted knowledge and immortality to the one who could eat them. This might be the reason why Sandro Botticelli depicted oranges instead of apples in the painting of the Garden of the Hesperides. All in all, back in the Middle Ages the Christian apologists interpreted the myth of the Garden of the Hesperides as the allusion to paradise on the Earth that was lost for humankind forever (Phillips n. p.). Indeed, both the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden and the Greek myth of the Garden of the Hesperides contain the same archetype of a mysterious garden where a tree with miraculous forbidden fruit grows, which is guarded by a monster (a horrible dragon in the Greek myth and a crafty serpent in the Bible). There are some other similar motives in the myth of the Garden of the Hesperides and the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden was the place were first human beings, namely, Adam and Eve, resided. They were identified with the archetype of immortal life, which was employed within the context of the ancient Greek myth of the Garden of the Hesperides (Phillips n. p.). The apple tree that grew in the Garden of Eden was a tree of knowledge of good and evil. Although according to the Bible the God forbade Adam and Eva touching the fruit of the tree, they disobeyed the order and ate the apple. Both of them were driven out of paradise for that and were made mortal beings. Unlike the Greek myth of the Garden of the Hesperides, the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden contains the monster, which was put to the garden by God in order to guard the apple tree but tempted Eve to eat the fruit of it. Eve, in turn, persuaded Adam to do the same. As Adam loved Eve it was hard for him to resist and he surrendered, which led to dire consequences for both of them. All of these implications were represented in the well-known painting of Berthold Furtmeyr, The Tree of Death and Life, which embraced the Christian idea of paradise. The Furtmeyrs painting was created in 1481, just a year before the aforementioned Botticellis masterwork was created. The picture is divided into six slots, each containing a message put in writing. All of the miniatures are connected to the central picture with a climber that has a strong resemblance with a rose, which might be the embodiment of wisdom and Gods presence in human life (Baring and Cashford 113). Works Cited Baring, Anne and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. London: Penguin Books. 1993. Print. Brown, Alison. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2010. Print. Cunningham, Lawrence S. and John J. Reich. Culture & Values, Volume II: A Survey of the Humanities with Readings. Boston: Cengage Learning. 2009. Print. Fisher, Celia. Flowers of the Renaissance. London: Lincoln. 2011. Print. Gombrich, Ernst. Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. London: Phaidon Press. 1972. Print. Heyl, Eugene. Under the Guise of Spring: The Message Hidden in Botticellis Primavera. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers. 2014. Print. Phillips, Suzanne. The Bible and Greek Mythology. Verona Fair. 02 Nov. 2012. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. < http://veronafair.hubpages.com/hub/the-bible-and-greek-mythology>. Snow-Smith, Joanne. The Primavera of Sandro Botticelli: A Neo-platonic Interpretation. New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. 1993. Print. Read More