Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/238

200 spirit of the Renaissance, and so strangely unlike the Greek world of which the Florentine humanists were enamoured, owe their inspiration to Poliziano's Giostra. In this unfinished poem he had celebrated the Tournament held on the Piazza of Santa Croce, in 1475, when the handsome Giuliano de' Medici, clad in silver armour, bore away the prize in the presence of his adored lady, Simonetta. This wondrous Venus floating on the waves and blown by the winds to the laurel groves on the summer shore, is there described exactly as Sandro painted her, laying one hand on her snowy breast, and the other on her long tresses of yellow hair. The poet had sung of the roses fluttering in the air and of the nymph in her white robe patterned over with blue corn-flowers, waiting to welcome the new-born goddess, and spreading out a pink mantle sown with daisies to fold round her white limbs. And in the first Canto of his Giostra, Poliziano had repeated that favourite tale of the Loves of Mars and Venus, which Lorenzo himself afterwards made the theme of one of his poems, and which is the subject of Botticelli's panel in the National Gallery. Here Venus, robed in gold-embroidered draperies, reclines in a woodland glade, watching the strong, broad-chested god of war, with limbs relaxed and drowsy head, lying on the grass sunk in deep slumber, while little goat-footed cherubs play with his armour at her feet. As a study of line and a purely decorative work, this composition is an admirable one; as an interpretation of a Greek myth by a Florentine painter it is of rare interest.

Once more, in his beautiful vision of Primavera, Sandro has given utterance to that fulness of joy in