Renaissance works from the Corsini Collection

Pictures at an exhibition...

Botticelli, c1500:
Madonna and Six Angels

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Simonetta: Nice collection. With Botticelli as a centerpiece.

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Giorgio: The Madonna? Your favorite here?

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Simonetta: It’s a latter work of his. When he’d switched from classical themes such as Birth of Venus and Primavera.

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Ghirlandaio, c1540:
Portrait of an Unknown Man

Giorgio: Ornate compositions. Lot of background. A lot of symbols. What a contrast to the portraits. Like the .

Ghirlandaio of an unknown young man. No background. Just a realistic face.

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Simonetta: Yes. Botticelli could do realism, could do portraits. But it seems he preferred idealism.

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Voice-over

An interesting curation of works from the Corsini collection in Florence blending into various works held by the art gallery and other collectors in Auckland. Ranging from 1300s to the 1960s. Read the 118-page pdf of labels here before you go. Helpful.

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Primavera: A garden with no dead plants?

Figures conversing in a painting…

Plants have to be beautiful and healthy

Chloris: Your garden always looks so… so WELL. But something puzzles me. There are no DEAD plants in your garden. I think that when they get sick you throw them out?

Flora: I can’t stand looking at anemic pathetic plants. They have to be beautiful and healthy.

Chloris: That’s a bit brutal.

Flora: I say to them: “You have five days to turn yourself around or you’ll be replaced.”

Chloris: When I see a sick plant, I put it in my plant hospital, I nurture it back to life.

Flora: Nursing is a noble calling.

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Voice-over

Flora may sound a little severe but she’s a busy goddess with a big territory to cover (500 species of plants in this corner of her garden alone). And it is heartening that she acknowledges the happiness in healing. Open to interpretation of course. The Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey might have intoned “noble calling” rather archly.
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The Primavera as Classical Narrative

C  -----------  B  ------------- A

In a Medici courtyard…

Sandro: The picture is classical and the plot is likewise classical.

Lorenzo: How say you?

Sandro: It is a right to left narration.

Lorenzo: We read from left to right.

Sandro: Direction does not matter. Harken to the story. At right, there is Zephyrus, the March wind. He captures Chloris and she becomes the goddess of spring, Flora. See, she scatters roses thus.

Lorenzo: And the woman at the center of the story?

Sandro: It is no earthly woman. That is Venus, attended by the Three Graces.

Lorenzo: They seem to spurn Chloris.

Sandro: Nay, they turn their backs on Zephyrus with his earthy love. Instead, they lean towards Mercury who loves knowledge.

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Voice-over

The Primavera is a depiction of one part of Ovid’s Fasti, a poem explaining the earlier Roman (not Julian) calendar. It is linear, and thus classical, beginning in January and ending in June. But critics say in places it is so allegorical as to border on erroneous. As such, Ovid’s narrative is also said to be fragmentary and difficult. He left it unfinished. Post-classical narrative?

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