James Baquet

    We tend to take for granted that things are what we are told they are. So Leonardo painted the “Mona Lisa” — a name he almost certainly never heard it called. “Homer” wrote “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” — though we have no idea if a person by that name ever lived.

    My point is, names become affixed to people, places and things, and then we take those names as “true,” though they may have been later inventions.

    Such is the case with No. 9 on our list of the “100 Greatest Paintings of All Time.” “Allegory of Spring,” often simply called “La Primavera” (Italian for “spring”) was never given that name by artist Sandro Botticelli (about 1445-1510). In fact, it has been called “one of the most controversial paintings in the world” because the idea that it depicts Spring is the only consensus among critics. There are other possible interpretations, including that it depicts Neoplatonic love. The name “La Primavera” was given to it by Giorgio Vasari, the same art historian who said the painting previously known as “La Gioconda” depicted a woman he called “Mona Lisa.”

    Assuming we are indeed dealing with an allegory of spring, the six female and two male figures in the painting (not counting the blindfolded Cupid above them) center on a slightly pregnant-looking image of Venus, goddess of love and fertility, a fitting representation of the abundance of spring.

    To her left (our right) are two females and a male, perhaps synchronously telling the story of Zephoris (the first wind of spring) and a nymph named Chloris, whose name means “green.” The dark winged male figure is grabbing the central female, seeming to kidnap her; the other female, then, is spring herself, also called Flora, a transformed version of Chloris after her mating with the wind god. She is shown scattering roses on the ground.

    On the other side is a group of three females — the Graces (Splendor, Mirth, and Good Cheer). The final figure, guarding the scene from encroaching clouds on the far left, may be Mercury or Mars.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. fastened

    2. majority of opinion

    3. plenty

    4. assume something is true

    5. with the eyes covered by a cloth

    6. new idea

    7. at the same time, showing scenes from two or more different times in one image

    8. representation of an abstract concept in concrete words or images

    9. a “spiritual” form, not involving physical relations

    10. moving beyond the proper limit