Zirpolo Reaction
Nicole Soley
2-26-13
Zirpolo: A Feminist Interpretation of the Primavera
Works of art are never produced without any form of connection to the culture from
which the artist lives in. Works of art hold their relevance through the way they connect to
past, present, and future societies. This is what makes art art. Sandro Botticelli’s painting
Primavera, or “spring,” embodies several ideas existing in fifteenth-century Renaissance
society in Italy. Lilian Zirpolo examines the connections of the painting to Renaissance
beliefs within her essay, Botticelli’s Primavera: A Lesson for the Bride. Through a feminist
approach, Zirpolo’s acknowledges the humanist, Neoplatonic values held within the
societal structure and identifies the female role within society and a marriage through
those values. Zirpolo does this by examining other works from the Renaissance cultural
context. In her essay, Zirpolo interprets Boticelli’s Primavera through a feminist lense by
examining its relationship to other fifteenth-century Renaissance works and, by doing so
Zirpolo argues the work’s function of teaching lessons to the bride.
Both Stokstad and Zirpolo acknowledge the work’s commission as having the
purpose of being painted for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici to
Semiramide d’Appiani. Zirpolo’s feminist approach examines more specifically the work’s
function in relationship to teaching moral lessons to the bride. To establish relationship
between the commissioned painting and Semirade, Zirpolo examines the work’s physical
contexts within the home of the bride and groom. Zirpolo argues the painting’s function is
to teach moral lessons to the bride. Zirpolo uses Webster Smith’s studies of the Medici
possessions to argue her point identifying the Primavera as being located in a room near
the “nuptial chamber” shared by the newlyweds (24). The painting, Smith identified, was
hung above the bedstead and was accompanied by many other works to “serve as a means
Zirpolo Reaction
Nicole Soley
2-26-13
of admonishing Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s bride and supplying her with lessons on
chastity, submission, and procreation” Zirpolo states (24). Zirpolo’s use of the
reconstruction of the original space for the work provides a foundation for constructing her
interpretation of the work’s function within its cultural context. In order to establish the
context of the painting as “serv[ing] as a model of behavior for the bride,” Zirpolo argues
examining the painting as “a component of a decorative program” within the Medici home
(24). By examining the work in relationship to its accompanying works, Zirpolo can
determine the meaning and references the painting contains. The relationships to the
other works around help Zirpolo to establish the work’s relevance to Renaissance ideas
relating to marriage. Zirpolo legitimates another lesson taught by the work based on it’s
location in relationship to other fifteenth-century Renaissance works found within the
home. Zirpolo argues that the painting’s location above the bedframe, which included a
marriage chest or a cassone reinforces the idea that the painting’s meaning can be
deducted from the accompanying works. Zirpolo reasons that the painting as a part of a
decorative whole could have included the “compliment[ing] scenes on the cassone” relating
to the lessons of reproducing to provide a strong, stable heir to the throne (26). In the
context of the decorative space, Zirpolo explains the work might have reinforced the
Renaissance “need for order, stability, and survival of the family” (26). By connecting the
work’s function to other pieces of furniture, which also were decorated with allegorical
stories to convey meaning, Zirpolo can establish the connected meaning of the work and
emphasize the purpose of the work to teach lessons to the bride.
Zirpolo further develops her argument through examining how the accompanying
painted works embody Renaissance ideals of the behavior of the female bride. Zirpolo
Zirpolo Reaction
Nicole Soley
2-26-13
explores the iconography of Botticelli’s accompanying painting Camilla and the Centaur
through a literary body of works including two 14th century literary works by Boccaccio
and Barbaro. These works explain the ideal woman’s behavior being a “model of virtuous
and chaste behavior” in which a wife exercises “moderation” through “controlling her
demeanor, behavior, speech, dress, eating, and lovemaking” (Boccaccio, Barbaro 25). This
view of the woman as a modest symbol of controlled chastity is examined by Zirpolo as she
explores how the chaste theme embodied by Camilla and the Centaur is legitimated by the
way the fourteenth-century literature relates to the Three Graces in the Primavera. Zirpolo
constructs an interpretation of Boticelli’s “calculated and restrained” movements by the
figures that, when connected to the themes in literary works, mirror the chaste, obedient
models of Renaissance women described in literary works. Zirpolo reinforces her
argument by citing letters written by males of the time to explain how women were
educated. Zirpolo explains in the letters written by the Chancellor of Florence, a prominent
male Renaissance figure, that women were allowed to study certain “suitable” subjects as
determined humanists of the time. Zirpolo explains that the Primavera served as a visual
way of representing a poetic or literary lesson. By using sources derived directly from the
Renaissance culture, including other paintings, Zirpolo legitimates her feminist
interpretation of the Primavera’s purpose of teaching the lesson of chaste behavior to the
bride.
Zirpolo also discusses the lesson taught through the Primavera of submission to her
husband, both in relation to willing obedience as well sexual compliance. Zirpolo uses this
lesson to explain the Primavera’s reference to rape as featured by Zephyrus’s persistence of
capturing the virgin Chloris. This instance of rape, Zirpolo argues, could be a
Zirpolo Reaction
Nicole Soley
2-26-13
representation of Renaissance beliefs about the woman’s sexual role in marriage. Zirpolo
provides the explanation that Renaissance marriage, or wedding ceremonies, “recall the
collective rape” of the Sabine women by the Romans, during which they were forced to
marry Roman husbands for the sake of the empire’s longevity (Altieri 26). Therefore, a
submissive wife was almost a civic act in which women could chose to obey for the sake of
“stable society and the perpetuation of the species” to further the Roman settlement (26).
Zirpolo uses classical stories, which would have been important in societal context at the
time in order to identify the beliefs of Renaissance culture that would manifest themselves
within works such as Botticelli’s Primavera. Through these connections, Zirpolo asserts
that the meaning of Zephyrus and Chloris is a depiction of this lesson for the bride of
obedient submission in order to continue the family of the Medici.
Zirpolo’s analysis of Botticelli’s Primavera within the context of fifteenth-century
Renaissance works both inside and outside the Medici home allows her to interpret the
painting through a feminist lens acknowledging both its moral function to the bride as well
as its embodiment of common ideas of fifteenth-century Renaissance society. Overall,
Zirpollo’s A Lesson for the Bride can teach us a lot about how to interpret and artwork’s
cultural relevance. Perhaps the most exciting thing about learning about a work’s original
context is how much it can teach us about its past meaning and how we can relate that
history to the artwork’s meaning today. We discussed in class how “art transcends death.”
Truly it does. An artwork’s meaning is constantly being adapted and reinterpreted. Past
culture to present to future—the relevance of art stays the same.