Nathaniel E. Silver

The catalogue and exhibition, held at the Gardner Museum, Boston, include loans from European and American public collections. Today the Primavera forms the cornerstone of Botticelli's modern fame, but its familiarity belies distant origins in the intellectual environment of Laurentian Florence and the residences of its moneyed elite. Part of a genre called spalliera, so named for their installation around shoulder (spalla) height, this type of painting...