cademy at Florence. The
design, inspired by Poliziano's poem the "Giostra," with reminiscences
of Lucretius and of Horace (perhaps also, as has lately been suggested,
of the late Latin "Mythologikon" of Fulgentius) thrown in, is of an
enchanting fantasy, and breathes the finest and most essential spirit of
the early Renaissance at Florence. Venus fancifully draped, with Cupid
hovering above her, stands in a grove of orange and myrtle and welcomes
the approach of Spring, who enters heralded by Mercury, with Flora and
Zephyrus gently urging her on. In pictures like this and in the later
"Birth of Venus," the Florentine genius, brooding with passion on the
little that it really yet knew of the antique, and using frankly and
freshly the much that it was daily learning of the truths of bodily
structure and action, creates a style wholly new, in which something of
the strained and pining mysticism of the middle ages is intimately and
exquisitely blended with the newly awakened spirit of naturalism and the
revived pagan delight in bodily form and movement and richness of linear
rhythm. In connexion with this and other classic and allegoric pictures
by the master, much romantic speculation has been idly spent on the
supposition that the chief personages were figured in the likeness of
Giuliano de' Medici and Simonetta Vespucci. Simonetta in point of fact
died in 1476, Giuliano was murdered in 1478; the web of romance which
has been spun about their names in modern days is quite unsubstantial;
and there is no reason whatever why Botticelli should have introduced
the likenesses of these two supposed lovers (for it is not even certain
that they were lovers at all) in pictures all of which were demonstrably
painted after the death of one and most of them after the death of both.

The tragedy of Giuliano's assassination by the Pazzi conspirators in
1478 was a public event which certainly brought employment to
Botticelli. After the capture and execution of the criminals he was
commissioned to paint their effigies hanging by the neck on the walls of
the Palazzo del Podesta, above the entrance of what was formerly the
Dogana. In the course of Florentine history public buildings had on
several previous occasions received a similar grim decoration: the last
had been when Andrea del Castagno painted in 1434 the effigies, hanging
by the heels, of the chief citizens outlawed and expelled on the return
of Cosimo de' Medici. Perhaps from the t