The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,24
Guido composed himself. “Forgive me. I didn’t at once recognize your somewhat—pagan—identification. And?”
I responded to his pompous tone by becoming as crude as I knew how. “And he’s trying to fuck the girl who’s puking flowers.” I pointed to the maiden in white who had a stream of blossoms flowing from her mouth. He winced at my language.
“He seems to be attempting an abduction or . . .” He cleared his throat. “A . . . rape.” He looked sideways at me, but I’d heard much worse in my time. And been paid to hear it. “Good. And what of the other male?”
I looked carefully, for the first time, at the martial figure with the sword. I started, then looked again.
The monk saw my astonishment. “What is it?”
“It’s him! It’s Botticelli.”
“Are you sure? It’s a self-portrait?” Brother Guido craned in,so his curls brushed my cheek.
“Yes!” I said, breathless suddenly with the closeness of him (you should remember, I usually get tumbled half a dozen times a day, and I’d gone from sundown to sundown without a man). I had to concentrate hard to return to the matter at hand. “It’s the very spit of him. That day in the studio I noticed it before. He’s even wearing the ocher-colored cloak that he wore when he painted me.”
“All right.” The brother moved away again, to rub his chin thoughtfully. I missed his nearness. “Well, that must be significant. Let’s return to him later. What of the other figures?”
“Well, the one in the middle, the grand lady, looks like a queen or a Madonna”—I kept the comparisons to Vero Madre to myself—“and next to her—the pregnant one—is, well, me.”
“Flora. At least we have one identification. And I think the other, the queen as you dubbed her, may be Venus, goddess of love.”
I nodded, as if I, too, had been thinking the very same thing. “And then here are three maids in white.” I studied the graceful trio. “It looks like they are dancing.”
“Good. I think so too. They would appear to be the three Graces of Roman mythology.”
I began to feel better. “And there are lots of flowers on the ground, and”—I peered closer—“oranges in the trees.”
“Excellent.”
I sat back, flushed with triumph. I turned to the brother. “What did you get?”
“Well, the thing immediately put me in mind of the Stanze, an allegorical cycle of poems by Angelo Poliziano, who is the favored poet at the court of the Medici. The allegory expounds on the metamorphosis of spring into summer, which would seem to be commensurate with the title of the piece, Primavera meaning Spring. Now, one would assume that the figures on the right—clearly depicting the rape of the shepherd girl Chloris by Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, and her subsequent transformation into the goddess Flora, the figure which you depict—begin the scene, and that the scene is to be read from right to left as most allegorical paintings are. But the presence of your friend Botticelli on the left of the picture, next to the three Graces, gives me pause. Although his appearance as Mercury, the winged messenger associated with the month of May, would seem to give credence to my first theorem, I think that the manner in which he holds his caduceus high, and stirs the clouds clockwise, indicates that the picture is meant to be read another way, namely, clockwise from left to right. Moreover, if you look very carefully at the slices of landscape behind the figures, the land on the right is the golden color of summer and autumn, and on the left, the colder, fresher hues of spring and early summer. But although this may indicate the direction the painting must be read, and that all the figures are immediately (almost too obviously) identifiable from well-known classical tropes, I must confess that its deeper secrets are hidden to me.” He paused to draw breath, and shook his head in puzzlement.
I suddenly felt a little less clever. And more confused than ever.
So it went on for hours.
Mercury and Venus were the only figures wearing shoes. The leaves framing the head of Venus were laurels, indicating the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Two of the three Graces wore jewels, one was unadorned. And so on and so on. Our eyes were hollow and shot with blood, our brains stuffed with detail, our throats hoarse with chatter.
The sky had already begun to lighten, and I was hungry for breakfast and a jug of beer.