12
Changing Natures
ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE of La Primavera, a dark scene of unrestrained passion and high drama is unfolding in the r**e of the wood nymph Chloris by Zephyr. Behind them, and in contrast to the rest of the painting, there is no fruit or blossom on the trees. Raptus or r**e, the forceful a*******n of a woman (seen as a crime against the husband whose property she was) was often glorified as patriotic and heroic, as in the r**e of the Sabine women, Rome’s celebrated mothers, who were carried off to establish the first Roman settlement on the banks of the Tiber. Ficino however described r**e as ‘amor ferrinis’, or madness: ‘Thus by this madness man sinks back to the nature of the beast’.1 However, as in Ovid’s poem quoted below, he can redeem himself and be re-born. Botticel
