For the fundamental decorative arrangement of the picture, white forms swaying before a vertical paling, Botticelli skilfully borrowed the motive of Pollaiuolo’s engraving, the Ten Nudes. Figure 109. From Pollaiuolo, too, come the nervous contours, the wiry ankles, and slender feet, and the curiously sprung knees. The old poets Lucretius and Horace give just the hint for the persons of the idyl. Lucretius tells of the coming of Spring blown in by the West wind, of Flora strewing flowers before, Figure 133, with Venus and her son as witnesses. And Horace tells how the three graces with ungirt robes dance before Mercury. But Botticelli has contributed what gives the work its penetrating, sad charm. His is the gloomy screen of orange trees and olives, the carpet of spring flowers, the billowing lines that sweep across the panel. It is conceived in two great rhythms of motion. The wave that is suave in playful Spring becomes crisp and sharp in the robe of Flora, and is nearly arrested in the heavy drapery of Venus, it passes with her raised hand to the shimmering veil of the dancing Graces, and dies in the firmly set form of Mercury, whose uplifted arm carries the movement into the steady background, which stabilizes it all. Even to mention the particular finesses and beauties of this fantastically lovely scene would require an essay. I have made a fuller if very imperfect analysis in my book, “Estimates in Art.” Now it is best to note merely that the only joyous forms are Zephyrus, Spring and Cupid, the rest are sad or enigmatically grave, as is Flora. Though they celebrate the renewal of life through love in springtime, those whose immortality has witnessed many springs carry in their faces and bearing the old knowledge that life and love are constantly reborn under death sentence, and that what is renewed spring after spring has but “The frail duration of a flower.” Again and again the poets have told this to unregarding man. Nobody has made it visible save Botticelli. I suppose only a score of people at the time knew how fine the Primavera was, and a few hundred in the world today may know it. The thing was hidden from the public, and Botticelli was painting himself into the most obscure sort of glory. In his remaining thirty-two years, there are a few reversions to his realistic vein, but his most characteristic works merely carry on the recondite charm, the acute and personal rhythms of the Primavera. In 1480 was painted the Faust-like figure of St. Augustine. Figure 134. One feels in the gnarled features and hand clutching the breast the burden of lifelong meditation on the terrible mysteries of free will and God’s eternal decrees. It is the effigy of one who has agonized in thought, and is still seeking by that Calvary of the mind a tense and hazardous peace.