Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

Castello just outside Florence. The picture shows the en-
tourage of Venus, as conceived in Horace’s Odes and Ovid’s
Fasti and expounded in Renaissance Florence by POLITIAN;
but the significance of the figures in terms of Neoplatonic
allegory has been much debated. Over the head of Venus
in the center of the picture, blindfolded Cupid aims his
dart at the central one of the three dancing GRACES, while
the god Mercury (see HERMES) stands on the left. In the
right of the picture Zephyr, the wind of spring, catches
hold of the nymph Chloris, who is instantly transformed
into the goddess Flora, spreading the earth with flowers, a
metamorphosis described in the Fasti.
Further reading: C. Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love:
Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of
Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, N.J. and Oxford, U.K.:
Princeton University Press, 1994).

Prince, The (Italian Il principe; 1532) A political treatise
in 25 chapters by MACHIAVELLI, with a conclusion urging
the redemption of Italy from barbarian forces. It was orig-
inally written in 1513 and dedicated to Giuliano de’
Medici but was revised in 1516 and dedicated to Giu-

liano’s nephew Lorenzo before he became duke of Urbino.

Machiavelli’s ideas had developed during his active career

(1498–1512) in the Florentine republic, when he had be-

come familiar with all manner of political problems and

conflicts and had, as a member of important missions, di-

rectly dealt with such powerful figures as Cesare Borgia.

The Prince concerns what is necessary for the suc-

cessful seizure and exercise of political power and consid-

ers the means available to achieve this end, without

reference to individual morality or ultimate religious

truths. The secular point of view and the ambiguous tone

arising from Machiavelli’s procedure of presenting his

firmly held opinions in a purely descriptive guise were

largely responsible for the work’s unjustified reputation in

the later 16th century as an epitome of atheism and

wickedness. It and its author were frequently alluded to in

Elizabethan writings. Il Principe was the subject of an

anonymous Tudor translation of about 1560, which was

edited by Hardin Craig and first published at Chapel Hill

in 1944. The first printed English translation (1640), by E.

Dacres and entitled Nicholas Machiavel’s Prince, was

reprinted in the Tudor Translations series (1905). The

339922 PPrriinnccee,, TThhee

La Primavera(c. 1480) One of a series of paintings in which Alessandro Boticelli reimagined pagan myths in terms of
Neoplatonic allegory (Uffizi, Florence).
Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images