The Three Graces, Aglaie, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, beautifully illustrate a theme of this course: continuity and meaning in cultural heritage. We will meet them first in a painting from Pompeii now in the Naples Museum (on the left above) and then again as a detail in Botticelli's famous Primavera in Florence (on the right above). From an original Hellenistic sculpture, now lost, the idea was re-embodied in the Pompeian painting. Other ancient versions, also now lost, reached the artists of Renaissance Florence, and the mystic maidens appear frequently in their work. To the Greeks, they were daughters of Zeus, companions of Apollo, and symbols of beauty, grace and wisdom. In the third century B.C., the Greek philosopher Chrysippus, in a work now lost, gave them an interpretation that comes down to us through the Roman philosopher Seneca. To Chrysippus and Seneca, the three maidens represented the graces of giving, receiving, and returning (Seneca: De beneficiis I.iii). In the Neoplatonism of the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the bounty bestowed by the gods upon humans was considered an overflowing or emanation (emanatio) which produced a vivifying rapture (raptio) whereby humans are reunited with the creative spiritual world (remeatio). Given Seneca's interpretation of the Three Graces, it was an easy step to see them as the pictorial representation of this process.
Botticelli was profoundly influenced by Ficino, and there can be little doubt that in placing the Three Graces in Primavera (Spring) he was pointing to this life-giving cycle. They thus point to the possibility of humans experiencing union with the creative spirit, with the One, with Primordial Being. And thus they take us back to Parmenides, the sixth century B.C. Greek Eleatic philosopher whom we meet as we explore his home town on our first day in Ascea.
(See Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance for more on the Three Graces.)
Botticelli was profoundly influenced by Ficino, and there can be little doubt that in placing the Three Graces in Primavera (Spring) he was pointing to this life-giving cycle. They thus point to the possibility of humans experiencing union with the creative spirit, with the One, with Primordial Being. And thus they take us back to Parmenides, the sixth century B.C. Greek Eleatic philosopher whom we meet as we explore his home town on our first day in Ascea.
(See Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance for more on the Three Graces.)
The Three Graces
The Three Graces appear in a wall painting in Pompeii (above left) and as a detail in Botticelli's Primavera (above right).
