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Ovid's Fasti is a poetic discussion of the Roman calendar, an almanac in verse replete with historical information, astronomical lore, and explanations of the origin and nature of various festivals and sacred rites celebrated over the course of the year (or at least the first half of the year, which is all the surviving text covers).1 Scholars have long recognized that Ovid's Fasti was one of the possible sources for Botticelli's Primavera [Fig. 1]. But in most cases Ovid is treated as one source among many, used primarily to explain what is happening on the right side of the picture; it has been agreed that the overall explanation lies elsewhere.2 Here, I would like to suggest that we come back to the Fasti, and that in many respects the Fasti - or more specifically Books IV and V, the sections that cover the spring months of April and May - represent a key not only to activity on the right, but to the painting as a whole; it is more central to our understanding of the painting than has generally been acknowledged.
Moreover, it was Angelo Poliziano who was Botticelli's guide to the relevant sections of Ovid's text. For many years it has been assumed that Poliziano played some role in the creation of Botticelli's Primavera, and his poem, the Stanze Cominciate per Ia Giostra del Magnifico Giuliano di Piero de' Medici, is often mentioned as one of the painter's principal sources, along with some of his other writings.3 But Polizianos's role can perhaps be pinned down a little further, as revolving more specifically around Ovid's Fasti. In the early 1480s, Poliziano concentrated his attention on Ovid's work, devoting a series of public lectures to the subject, at the Studio Fiorentino, and it is possible that Poliziano's teachings generated a new interest in Ovid's text, an interest that may well have given rise to Botticelli's picture, which too concerns the spring months of April and May. Ovid's poem was an important point of departure, and Poliziano guided the way.
The Fasti
Aby Warburg first suggested a link between the Primavera and Ovid's Fasti in his classic study published in 1893.4 In considering the sources for Botticelli's composition, Warburg cited the now-familiar encounter between the narrator...