Op. cit., p. 336. Walter Pater (The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, London, 1910, p. 60) has even gone further than Jacobsen in describing the 'wilted' condition of this figure; «he [Botticelli] paints the goddess of pleasure... but never without some shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers».

Op. cit., p. 336.

Sandro Botticelli, pp. 58-59. C. Dempsey (p. 255), besides Cupid's presence, gives two additional reasons for a Venus identification: «It is Cupid in attendance, the fact that the scene is set in a garden of apple trees (a fruit proper to Venus; see, e.g. Philostratus, Imagines, i, 6), and that the central figure is framed in a spray of myrtle, which clearly establishes her identity as Venus». The reasons that Dempsey adduces in the problem of identity are, a priori, valid and bring up the crucial point that Botticelli, in order to confuse the beholder with an ambiguous and enigmatic character, conscientiously portrayed his central figure with a minimum of Venus attributes. That he was entirely successful in this, goes without saying.

E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, p. 34. In this recent book, the critic included his famous article on «Botticelli's Mythologies» and presented a re-appraisal and criticism of it, after a lapse of a quarter of a century.

Gombrich, «Botticelli's Mythologies», p. 41.

Botticelli, Le Printemps, (Paris, 1938), p. 4. A. Chastel, Art et humanisme, p. 383, also sees the central figure in a similar light: «Vénus surgit comme une madone sous l'arcature des orangers du bois sacré». Cf. Botticelli's central figure with the Virgin in Baldovinetti's Annunciation.

«Y la primera entrada que hizo Preciosa en Madrid fué un día de Santa Ana, patrona y abogada de la villa, con una danza en que iban ocho gitanas, cuatro ancianas y cuatro muchachas, y un gitano, gran bailarín, que las guiaba; y aunque todas iban limpias y bien aderezadas, el aseo de Preciosa era tal, que poco a poco fué enamorando los ojos de cuantos la miraban». La Git., pp. 6-7.

Besides the significance of the total number, and the singular characteristic of a gipsy Mercury who is the leader, the division of the remaining eight figures into two groups, one of old gipsy women and the other of young girls, may be meaningful in that it personifies the spirit of humanism as something old, and at the same time something new; that is, the old spirit of Ciceronian humanitas reborn as a new spirit of Renaissance humanism.

A few examples of the Virgin and Child in this type of setting are: Paradise Garden by a German Master; Paradise Garden by Pisanello or Stefano da Verona; and Madonna in the Wood by Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), a Florentine painter who in his later years was a contemporary of Botticelli. All of these works depict Mary and the Christchild in beautiful garden settings with trees and a great abundance of flowers.

Critics have long suspected that Botticelli may have had in mind a processional representation of the figures on his canvas; see Bettina Wadia, Botticelli, (London, 1968), p. 15: «The row of figures in the Primavera across the flat screen of trees is processional, in a slight right to left movement set up by the gesturing hands and the direction of the bodies». W. J. Stellman -«Italian Old Masters: Botticelli», The Century Magazine, XL (Sept. 1890), 503-04- also interprets the figures in a similar way: «In the center... is a fully-draped woman in the costume of the epoch, and evidently a portrait, in the attitude of listening or admiring, as if the other characters were part of a pageant displayed before her». The italics are mine.