916. VENUS WITH CUPIDS.
School of Botticelli (Florentine: 1447-1510). See 1034.
See also (p. xx)
The expression of melancholy characteristic of Botticelli's Madonnas is not absent from his heathen goddesses either. Notice also the roses—the painter's favourite flower (see 226). This picture is probably only a work of his school; the figure of the goddess is a not very successful repetition of the one in 915. The subject of the picture recalls the description of Simonetta in Poliziano's poem:—
White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathèd folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride;
The wild wood smiled; the thicket, where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.
Symonds's Translation.