Botticelli painted his large pagan allegories probably taking advice from the poet Poliziano as well as the Neoplatonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino. The masterpieces have come to symbolize the florentine golden age under Lorenzo the Magnificent in the 1470s and 1480s, for whose circle they were painted.
Part of a generation of painters grown bored with Masaccios austere realism Boticcelli introduced an element of Gothic elegance and wistfulness, which adds to the romantic appeal of this pagan theme. The figures in Spring especially lack the solidity of much earlier Quattrocento art, and the background recalls a Gothic tapestry. By giving a form to current neo-pagan literary and philosophical ideas through his exceptionally limpid color and impeccable clear draughtsmanship, Botticelli perhaps unwittingly brought about a revolution in art. His Venus was the first large-scale female nude in Western art for a thousand years.
