Mysterious Goings On in the Sacred Grove

Primavera (Spring) by Sandro Botticelli, Florence, Italy, 1482, tempera (egg and oil paint) on wood panel, 80" X 124"; the painting is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

I love this painting. Really. I have studied it and written about it. (it's big, you'll have to click on it to see the whole thing.) I have visited it twice over the years and cried both times. I even created and produced a choreography based on it. The crazy early spring weather we are having right now reminds me of the dance here between Zephyr, the North Wind (blue guy) and the maiden Flora (vomiting flowers. That's also Flora in the Betsey Johnson dress, but she's a more mature Flora.) We've had days of warm sun followed by days (today) of cold blue fog. The daffodils are ready to burst and the plum blossoms are out a full two months earlier than last year. It's dramatic and beautiful and it makes me giddy. I love the energy of early Spring. Yesterday we had a little walk in an old, established public garden, with big lawns, a collection of unusual trees and a rose allee, right on the shore of the estuary. It was empty and bare bones, and a fog was rolling in off the water. There was blue sky showing straight overhead and the bare oaks and beeches were tall and grand. Everything was just at that stage of starting to press into bud, or starting to push green spikes through soil - looking like bare ground and branches, but feeling like a building pressure, an ecstatic opening just about to happen.