For an example in which Cervantes uses an El Greco painting, the Pietà, consult my article on «El hondo simbolismo de la hija de Agi Morato», published in January, 1977 in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (Madrid).

The principal Renaissance source for considering the Graces as the unfolded attributes of Venus, in whom the three converge to produce a whole of extraordinary beauty, is Pico de la Mirandola: «Qui profunde et intellectualiter divisionem unitatis Venereae in trinitatem Gratiarum... intellexerit, videbit modum debite procedendi in Orphica Theologia». (Conclusiones, XXXI, 8). The translation is as follows: «He who profoundly comprehends the division of the unity of Venus into a trinity of Graces, will see how to proceed into Orphic theology». This process of infolding within Venus herself the attributes of the Graces appears to be what Spenser was thinking of in The Faerie Queene (VI, X, 15) when he says that all «that Venus in her selfe doth vaunt, / Is borrowed of them». More will be said of this in another section when we witness a veritable apotheosis of this mystic phenomenon in the person of the gipsy girl Preciosa.

E. H. Gombrich, «Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of his Circle», London University. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, VIII (1945), 16-18. Reprinted in Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London: Phaidon, 1972. An important point which must be borne in mind is that young Lorenzo is also the destinataire of the Primavera; i.e., both the letter and the painting were composed for the same person.

Art critics have been, for the most part, favorable to Gombrich's Venus-Humanitas theory. Proof of this is seen in A. Chastel (Marsile Ficin et l'art, Genève-Lille, 1954, p. 119): «Venus qui désigne dans l'univers pacifié et 'souriant,' la puissance pacificatrice de l'amour, devenait ainsi l'une des grandes divinités du cercle platonicien;... Elle inspire l'idéal d'Humanitas». See also, by the same critic: Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique, (Paris, 1959), pp. 267-69, and 383, where he calls Venus «divinité tutélaire de l'éducation humaniste». Though not as enthusiastically as the Frenchman, Panofsky (Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, New York, 1972, pp. 194-95) appears willing to accept the Venus-humanitas equation, as does G. C. Argan in Botticelli, Skira, 1957.

In the section on the meaning of the Primavera, we shall observe that the enigmatic composition is essentially one in which the light of the Renaissance invades the dark medieval garden in the form of a glorious and resplendent procession, marking the triumph of the new spirit of humanitas. Cervantes, in perceiving correctly this essential feature, presents his literary interpretation in two parts corresponding to the «light on darkness theme» of the Primavera (see Fig. 1).

La Galatea, Clásicos Castellanos, I, pp. 30-31.

La Galatea, I, pp. 34-35.

Whether Lisandro is indeed meant to be a true representation of the god Mercury is, at this point, difficult to determine. Cervantes gives us several clues -which tend to point in this direction- when he, on more than one occasion, refers to Lisandro as the swift-footed shepherd (ligero pastor), and particularly when he describes what appears to be his superhuman speed in overtaking, in just a few steps, another shepherd who was already «running at the greatest speed in the world», (corriendo a la mayor priesa del mundo). La Galatea, I, p. 28. See also p. 29, where Cervantes mentions how Lisandro darted away from Elicio, «with such speed that Elicio lost all hope of catching him even if he tried to follow him». Another detail in which Cervantes seems to be evoking Mercury is when he describes Lisandro as standing in the clearing «with energetic pose» (con estremado brío), a characteristic which ties in rather neatly with the Ancients' conception of Mercury as a god who -besides his tremendous speed- had a certain vital, prompt and energetic liveliness about him.

La Galatea, II, p. 170.

This, the only mention of Venus in the entire novel, indicates that Cervantes was reserving her appearance for the special occasion of this vision which completes the second half of the Allegory of Spring.