Flora Unveiled

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Women and Flowers in Early Renaissance Poetry and Art

During the early Renaissance, artists and poets turned to the themes and aesthetic styles of

the classical period for inspiration. Pagan artistic associations between women, flowers, and

fruits were resurrected, usually with erotic overtones.^42 For example, the Elizabethan poet

Thomas Campion saw a garden in his lover’s face:

There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies grow;

A heav’nly paradise is that place

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.

There cherries grow which none may buy,

Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.^43

In “The Rapture,” the seventeenth- century poet Thomas Carew uses a garden metaphor

to express his amorous intentions:

Then, as the empty bee that lately bore

Into the common treasure all her store,

Flies ‘bout the painted field with nimble wing,

Deflow’ring the fresh virgins of the spring,

So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell

In my delicious paradise, and swell

My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power

Of fervent kisses from each spicy flower.

I’ll seize the rose- buds in their perfumed bed,

The violet knots, like curious mazes spread

O’er all the garden, taste the ripen’d cherry,

The warm firm apple, tipp’d with coral berry :

Then will I visit with a wand’ring kiss

The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss.^44

In the realm of art, Sandro Botticelli’s monumental masterpiece, Primavera (1482),

invokes classical deities to represent spring (Figure 11.4). The central figure of the paint-

ing is Venus (not shown in Figure 11.4), but Chloris and Flora play important support-

ing roles. The right side of the painting shows the progression of Chloris from a Greek

nymph to the Roman goddess of flowers, as described by Ovid. Zephyr (Latin Favonius),

the god of the west wind, tries to make up for raping Chloris by marrying her, which will

transform her into a goddess. Zephyr works his magic, and Chloris begins her metamor-

phosis: “As she talks, her lips breathe spring roses: ‘I was Chloris, who am now called

Flora.’ ”^45 We see Chloris with roses streaming from her mouth, and, shortly afterwards

in her floral dress as the fully realized, pregnant Flora, goddess of Spring, who sprinkles

roses on the ground.