Introduction

I have been encouraged to write this monograph on Botticelli's Primavera because of the favorable reception of my Garden of the Renaissance. In that book I had offered the suggestion that the "reading" of plant symbolism may help to understand the meaning of a work of art. There, too, I had offered in the Introduction a method of interpretation. To show how the explanation of plant symbolism may help to identity a subject, to date a work of art, and to penetrate the intricate thought of a painting when its meaning escapes us, I singled out three paintings which I analyzed at length.