B O T T I C E L L I ’S G A R L A N D S

REBEKAH COMPTON

In his Birth of Venus (ca. 1484–86) and Primavera (ca. 1477–82), Botti-
celli contrasts the botanical patterns on the dresses of the Hora and
Flora (figs. 1 and 2) with the foliage and flowers of their garlands and
the surrounding landscape. The artist’s floral rivalry may have its source
in two ancient paragoni found in book 21 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural
History (79 CE), a book dedicated to the composition, weaving, and
wearing of garlands. The first competition is between nature and the
artist, and the second is between the garland weaver and the painter.1
Pliny’s paragoni resemble other artistic rivalries found in book 35 of the
Natural History, such as the famous contest between Zeuxis and Par-
rhasius, which sought to prove artistic value and valor by means of com-

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 Fig. 1. Sandro Botticelli, detail of the Hora from Birth of Venus, ca. 1484–86;
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

petition.2 Under the auspices of the planet Venus, the art of garland
weaving was practiced in fifteenth-century Florence, and flowers to
sew on garlands (fiore da filare ghirlande) were sold by the Arte di Por
Santa Maria.3
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 Fig. 2. Sandro Botticelli, detail of Flora from Primavera, ca. 1477–82; Florence,
Galleria degli Uffizi.

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 According to Pliny, the earliest garlands were made of “branches of
trees.”4 Evergreens were popular for this type, because their foliage
remained green for several seasons and their fragrances did not over-
power the senses. While Apollo ruled the laurel garland, Venus gov-
erned the myrtle wreath. In his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (1360–74),
Giovanni Boccaccio writes that the myrtle bush is dedicated to Venus
because “the odor of this tree is believed by some to induce love; or, as
doctors say, because it provides many beneficial things for women;
or because from its berries a certain substance can be made to excite
passion and then strengthen it.”5 In Botticelli’s Primavera, a myrtle bush
fans out behind Venus to form an evergreen nimbus, while in the Birth
of Venus, the Hora (fig. 1) wears two branches twisted together in a sim-
ple but natural design. The small green leaves spread out playfully across
her neck and breasts.
Pliny explains that flowers were added to garlands to vary color and
to heighten fragrance. These garlands, which in Roman times consisted
primarily of violets and roses, were seasonal, feminine, and known for
distracting the mind.6 In discussing their advent, Pliny praises Na-
ture’s ability to give flowers a variety of colors, noting that she is “play-
ful in her great joy at her varied fertility.” He then declares that “not
even the painter’s art, however, suffices to copy their colors and the
variety of their combinations,” whether they are “woven together alter-
nately” or separately or in different strands intertwined or coiled to-
gether.7 In the Primavera, Flora (fig. 2) wears a wreath of green foliage
interspersed with multicolored flowers. Taking up Pliny’s challenge,
Botticelli imitates Nature’s palette by painting flowers of azurite blue,
lead white, red lake, and Naples yellow. He chooses flowers with dif-
ferent petal shapes and sizes that herald the coming of spring.8
Compared to the Hora’s myrtle garland (fig. 1), Flora’s wreath is
carefully designed and may illustrate Pliny’s second paragone. The an-
cient historian explains that the art of flower garlands “began at Sicyon
through the skill of Pausias the painter and of the garland-maker Gly-
cera, a lady with whom he was very much in love; when he copied her
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 works in his paintings, she to egg him on varied her designs, and there
was a duel between Art and Nature. Pictures of this kind painted by
that famous artist are still extant, in particular the one called Stephan-
eplocos, in which he painted the lady herself.”9 Botticelli’s precise paint-
ing of Flora’s wreath, including his observation of foliage placement
and balancing of flower colors, suggests that he may have copied a real-
life garland. He asserts its presence through the three-dimensionality
of the leaves and flowers, an optical illusion that is enforced by the two-
dimensional patterns on Flora’s dress, particularly the yellow flowers
that appear on both. In the context of the paragone, Botticelli trumps
art (floral patterns) in depicting nature (real plants) and then trumps
nature by painting the garland, which may have been designed by a
flower weaver. His garland also competes with Pausias’s portrait of
Glycera, which Pliny mentions once again in book 35 as “one of the
very finest of pictures.”10
In the Primavera and Birth of Venus, Flora and the Hora wear rose
garlands around their waists. Pliny writes that, when flowers were added
to garlands, they were called serta from the word serere, which means to
weave or bind together, a verb that refers to the intertwining of branches
to form a garland as well as the threading of flowers into a series.11 Bot-
ticelli chooses the more organic design of weaving two branches to-
gether rather than the more artificial one of stringing different-colored
blossoms together. The latter garlands, which usually alternate be-
tween red and white or pink and white roses, appear in other paintings
of Venus, such as the Schifanoia fresco of Taurus, painted by Francesco
Cossa, Ercole Roberti, and others during 1469–70. In the rose girdles
of Flora and the Hora, Botticelli carefully illustrates the over-under,
over-under twining of the branches and their foliage. His rose blossoms
similarly face up or down depending on the direction of the branch.
In both garlands, Botticelli depicts a specific rose, named Rosa alba
semiplena.12 Using white lead and red lake glazes, he imitates the
creamy white petals and their pink blush. Though he does not create
variety through color or type, Botticelli illustrates the roses in different
Botticelli’s Garlands 287

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 states of blossoming. This feature may also have been inspired by Pliny,
who describes the opening of a rose in sensual terms: “Every bud ap-
pears at first enclosed in a shell full of grains, which presently swells,
and after sloping itself into a green cone like a perfume box, gradually
reddens, splitting and spreading out into a cup, which encloses the yel-
low points that stand out of its center.”13 In the middle of the Hora’s gar-
land (fig. 1), a small closed bud sprouts from the dark green branch,
accompanied on the viewer’s left by two cones, from which the tip of a
pink flower, like lipstick, pushes forward. Botticelli includes six ma-
ture roses unfurling their soft pink petals and yellow stamens within,
which he brightens with liquid gold.
Botticelli’s flower garlands enhance the sensual, amorous, and fer-
tile intentions of his Venus paintings. It is likely, however, that the art-
ist was also aware of the negative moral connotations placed on flower
garlands by some of the early church fathers. Clement of Alexandria
(ca. 150–215), for example, condemns the wearing of garlands because
of their ephemerality, dedication to idols, association with luxury, and
powers of intoxication. He furthermore makes a pertinent connection
between flower garlands and Christ’s crown of thorns, declaring, “Be-
sides, it is inconsistent for us who celebrate the holy suffering of the
Lord, who know that he was crowned with thorns, to crown ourselves
with flowers.”14 Closer to Botticelli’s own time, San Bernardino da Si-
ena makes a similar comparison, castigating women “redeemed with
Christ’s blood” for going to mass with their heads “adorned with flow-
ers.”15
Such thoughts may have crossed Botticelli’s mind when he painted
the crown of thorns in his Christ as Man of Sorrows with a Halo of Angels
between 1495 and 1505 (fig. 3). In book 21, Pliny notes that the term
corona was employed for garlands used at sacrifices and military hon-
ors.16 Thus, Christ’s corona of thorns is both a mock flower garland
and a faux crown. Botticelli paints it like the rose garlands of Flora
and the Hora, with two branches intertwined, one over the other.
Drained of their bright green color, the dead branches display no foliage
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 Fig. 3. Sandro Botticelli, Christ as Man of Sorrows with a Halo of Angels,
ca. 1495–1505; private collection.

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 or flowers but rather, long sharp thorns. Several dig deeply into Christ’s
skin, causing the red blood to bloom upon his forehead. While Flora
(fig. 2) smiles gracefully under her floral chaplet, her face flush with
the joy of spring, Christ (fig. 3) grimaces beneath the crown of thorns,
his eyes and cheeks swollen with pain. The extremes of pleasure and suf-
fering, the oscillating states of existence, may have inspired a fifteenth-
century viewer to pray with that other garland of roses: the rosary of the
blessed virgin Mary, a Christian synthesis that asserted the flower gar-
land’s beauty once again!

NO TE S

1. Pliny, Natural History, trans. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library 392,

vol. 6, bk. 21.1–3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951),
160–65.
2. Pliny includes many of these competitions in book 35 on minerals. The
competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which Zeuxis paints grapes
realistic enough to fool birds and then Parrhasius paints a curtain that fools
Zeuxis, is the most famous. Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb
Classical Library 394, vol. 9, bk. 35.65–66 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1952), 308–11. For a discussion of this anecdote and others
that influenced artists and theorists of the Renaissance, see Sarah Blake
McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy
of the Natural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 42–51,
316–45.
3. Ptolemy, for example, writes: “If Venus rules action, she makes her subjects
persons whose activities lie among the perfumes of flowers or of unguents,
in wine, colors, dyes, spices, or adornments, as, for example, sellers of un-
guents, weavers of chaplets, innkeepers, wine-merchants, druggists, weav-
ers, dealers in spices, painters, dyers, sellers of clothing.” Ptolemy,
Tetrabiblos or Quadripartite being Four Books of the Influence of the Stars,
trans. F. E. Robbins, Loeb Classical Library 435, bk. 4 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1940), 384–85. For a list of goods sold by the
Arte di Por Santa Maria, see the Gabelle of Giovanni da Uzzano (1359–1431)
in Giovanni Pagnini, ed., Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal
comune di Firenze, vol. 2, bk. 4 (Bologna: Forni, 1967), 5–8.

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 4. “For at first it was customary to make from branches of trees the chaplets
used at sacred contests as prizes.” Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.3,
162–63.
5. Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, ed. and trans. Jon Solomon,
I Tatti Renaissance Library Series, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2011), 394–95.
6. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.10, 170–71.
7. Ibid., bk. 21.1, 160–61.
8. Mirella Levi D’Ancona discusses the wreath’s foliage as myrtle and the flow-
ers as periwinkles, myositis, hellebore, lily-of-the-valley, strawberry, and
pomegranate flowers. For identification and symbolism, see Botticelli’s Pri-
mavera: A Botanical Interpretation including Astrology, Alchemy and the Medici
(Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1983), 58–60.
9. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.3, 162–65.
10. In this version of the story, Pliny describes how Pausias fell in love with
Glycera, imitated her “in rivalry,” “advanced the art of encaustic painting,”
reproduced “an extremely numerous variety of flowers,” and then painted
her portrait. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 9, bk. 35.125, 352–53.
11. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.2, 162–63.
12. For a discussion of this rose, see Gerd Krüssmann, The Complete Book of
Roses, trans. Gerd Krüssmann and Nigel Raban (Portland, OR: Timber,
1981), 76. D’Ancona explains that the rose is an attribute of Venus and a
symbol of “joy in love”; see D’Ancona, Botticelli’s Primavera: A Botanical
Interpretation, 91–92. Roses were also aphrodisiacs and were employed in
the manufacture of soaps, powders, lozenges, incense, and perfumes. For
rose recipes, see De secreti del reverendo donno Alessio Piemontese (Lyon:
Theobaldo Pagano, 1558), 166, 177, 179, 184–85, 191.
13. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.10, 170–71.
14. For his discussion of garlands, see Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educa-
tor, trans. Simon P. Wood, Fathers of the Church Series, vol. 23 (Washing-
ton, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 153–59; for quotation,
156.
15. “Mirabile equidem videretur si mulier in morte sponsi vel patris ad Missam
pergeret caput floribus adornata. Multo quidem mirabilius est si mulier,
sanguine Christi redempta, summi Patris filia ac sponsa, ad Missam vadit
cum capite non tantum floribus sed auro et lapidibus pretiosis, fuco ac falsa
capillatura ornata, cum quaelibet Missa celebretur in memoriam Christi
passi, cumque corpus et sanguis Domini in Missa a sacerdote levatur,

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 elevatio Christi in cruce continue memoretur.” A few sentences later, San
Bernardino reminds his listeners of Christ’s head, pierced and wounded by
the crown of thorns; see sermon 47 in San Bernardino’s Opera Omnia, vol. 2
(Florence: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventura, 1950), 95.
16. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 6, bk. 21.2, 162–63.

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