Primavera

As the passage also contains other figures in Botticelli's group, it is probably one of the main sources for the painting: "Spring-time and Venus come,/ And Venus' boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before,/ And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora,/ Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/ With colours and with odours excellent.". Though notionally synonymous with Christmas, both religious and secular, Yule and Yuletide are sometimes used by English speakers as secular names for December 25th and late December in general in much the same way that the Scandinavian "Jul" does not distinguish between the Germanic Pagan feast, Christmas, and (quite possibly) the pre-Indo-European winter solstice celebration. In his philosophical didactic poem De Rerum Nature the classical writer Lucretius celebrated both goddesses in a single spring scene. A much more popular winter celebration is "Christmas in July", not surprisingly celebrated (several times by some) in July, removing the celebration from all religious connections both Pagan and Christian. Flora is standing next to Venus and scattering roses, the flowers of the goddess of love. Because Christmas happens during extreme summer temperatures in the southern hemisphere, a few Australians celebrate a second festival, known as Yulefest, at the southern winter solstice in June. This is why the clothes of the two women, who also do not appear to notice each other, are being blown in different directions. The holiday is observed in a manner that commemorates the death of the Oak King identified with the wren bird (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the robin redbreast Holly King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow).

Botticelli is depicting two separate moments in Ovid's narrative, the erotic pursuit of Chloris by Zephyr and her subsequent transformation into Flora. In particularly Wiccan-influenced and New Age religions attempts at reconstruction are largely disregarded and the festival is largely only related to historical accounts by name, as a part the Wheel of the Year. Regretting his violence, he transforms her into Flora, his gift gives her a beautiful garden in which eternal spring reigns. [2]. Aroused to a fiery passion by her beauty, Zephyr, the god of the wind, follows her and forcefully takes her as his wife. Groups such as the Asatru Folk Assembly in the US recognize the celebration as lasting for 12 days, beginning on the date of the winter solstice. For the month of May, Flora tells how she was once the nymph Chloris, and breathes out flowers as she does so. Further attempts at reconstruction of surviving accounts of historical celebrations are often made, a hallmark being variations of the traditional blót.

One source for this scene is Ovid's Fasti, a poetic calendar describing Roman festivals. In Germanic Neopagan sects, Yule is celebrated with gatherings that often involve a meal and gift giving. Leaving aside the suppositions there remains the profoundly humanistic nature of the painting, a reflection of contemporary cultural influences and an expression of many contemporary texts. [1] The Pope sanctions such conversion tactics as Biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. For instance, the Primavera was also read as a political image: Love (Amor) would be Rome ("Roma" in Italian); the three Graces Pisa, Naples and Genoa; Mercury Milan; Flora Florence; May Mantua; Cloris and Boreas Venice and Bozen-Bolzano (or Arezzo and Forlì). The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards the one true God instead of to their pagan gods (whom the Pope refers to as "devils"), "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God". Various interpretations of the scene exist. English historian Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons.

Next to her walks Flora, the goddess of spring, who is scattering flowers. Halloween and Easter are theorized to have been likewise assimilated from northern European pagan festivals. From the right, Zephyr, the god of the winds, is forcefully pushing his way in, in pursuit of the nymph Chloris. The tradition derives from the sacrifice to the god Freyr at the Yule celebrations. The messenger of the gods is also identified by means of his winged shoes and the caduceus staff which he used to drive two snakes apart and make peace; Botticelli has depicted the snakes as winged dragons. The Scandinavian tradition of slaughtering a pig at Christmas (see Christmas ham), and not in the autumn, is probably the most salient evidence for this. Mercury, who is lightly clad in a red cloak covered with flames, is wearing a helmet and carrying a sword, clearly characterizing him as the guardian of the garden. When the first missionaries began converting the Germanic peoples to Christianity, they found it easier to simply provide a Christian reinterpretation for popular feasts such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to go on largely unchanged, rather than trying to suppress them.

The garden of Venus, the goddess of love, is guarded on the left by Mercury, who stretches out his hand to touch the clouds. are apparently derived from traditional northern European Yule celebrations. The Grace on the right side has the face of Caterina Sforza, also painted by Botticelli in a famous portrait in the Lindenau Museum as Catherine of Alexandria. Many of the symbols associated with the modern holiday of Christmas such as the burning of the Yule log, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. Above her, Cupid is aiming one of his arrows of love at the Charites (Three Graces), who are elegantly dancing a rondel. The occasions were annual banquets on December 26,. Venus is standing in the centre of the picture, set slightly back from the other figures. The confraternities of artisans of the 9th century, which developed into the medieval guilds, were denounced by Catholic clergy for their "conjurations" when they swore to support one another in coming adversity and in business ventures.

Above all it is the women's domed stomachs that demonstrate the contemporary ideal of beauty. It is, however, known to have included the sacrifice of a pig for the god Freyr, a tradition which survives in the Scandinavian Christmas ham. These are, however, not direct copies but are translated into Botticelli's own unconventional formal language: slender figures whose bodies at times seem slightly too long. 'Yule-Joy', with dancing, continued through the Middle Ages in Iceland, but was frowned upon when the Reformation arrived. Some of the figures are based on ancient sculptures. What is certain is that Yule celebrations at the winter solstice predate Christianity, and though there are numerous references to Yule in the Icelandic sagas, there are few accounts of how Yule was actually celebrated, beyond the fact that it was a time for feasting. The Primavera is, however, special in that it is one of the first surviving paintings from the post-classical period which depicts classical gods almost naked and life-size. Other Slavic languages have similar words as well.

Such large format paintings were nothing new in high-ranking private residences. In Russian, the word "ёлка" /ˈjɔlkɐ/ refers to fir trees, which are associated with yuletide. The painting decorated an anteroom attached to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's chambers. The meaning later narrowed to mean Christmas with the coming of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England. An inventory dating from 1499, which was not discovered until 1975, lists the property of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni and states that in the 15th century the Primavera had been displayed in Florence's city palace. In Old English, geóla originally referred to the month of December. This is why it was long assumed that the Primavera, as the painting continues to be called, was painted for the fourteen year old Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco when the villa was bought. The word "jul" has also been borrowed into the neighboring Finnic languages, most notably to Finnish and Estonian (where it has been modified to "joulu" and "jõul" , respectively, and denotes Christmas in modern usage), although the Finnic languages have a linguistic origin different from Germanic languages.

In 1477, the estate was acquired by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, who was a second cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. "Jewish Yule") for Hanukkah. In 1550, Vasari wrote that a picture which according to him announced the arrival of spring (Primavera in Italian) was in the Medici villa in Castello. In the Scandinavian Germanic languages, the term Jul covers both Yule and Christmas, and is also occasionally used to denote other holidays in December, e.g., "jødisk jul" or "judisk jul" (tr. It is housed in Uffizi Gallery of Florence. Linguists suggest that Jól has been inherited by Germanic languages from a pre-Indo-European substrate language and either borrowed into Old English from Old Norse or directly inherited from Proto-Germanic. 1482. Of the contested origin of Jól, one popular but factually unlikely connection is to Old Norse hjól, wheel, to identify the moment when the wheel of the year is at its lowpoint, ready to rise again.

The Primavera is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, c. . This usage survives in the term "Yule log"; it may also persist in some Scottish dialects. Indeed, this is the only meaning of "Yule" accepted by either the full Oxford English Dictionary or the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and people unfamiliar with ancient pagan traditions will not distinguish between Yule and Christmas. "Yule" and "Yuletide" are also archaic terms for Christmas, sometimes invoked in songs to provide atmosphere.

In Germanic Neopaganism it is one of the eight solar holidays, or sabbats, where Yule is celebrated on the winter solstice: in the northern hemisphere, circa December 21, and in the southern hemisphere, circa June 21. Yule was the winter solstice celebration of the Germanic pagans.