Dionysus and Menads, Palermo, c. 460 B.C
Menads dancing and playing the tambourine at the festival of Dionysus (detail), Naples
For a thousand years, Islamic weavers have felt moved to give visual form to the metaphysical Tree of Life, and this symbol has always been easier to imagine during a time of year when the creative sap runs high both without and within. The Greeks have always associated spring with the best things in life - youth, wine, poetry, and drama, and thus with their presiding deity, Bacchus. In the Japanese aesthetic, spring is evoked with feather-light strokes of the brush or bow, in tandem with the delicate symmetries of migrating Japanese cranes.
The
West’s exploration of springtime’s treasures yielded the lightbursts
of Van Gogh’s inspired canvas, the effulgence of the Impressionist
school, the cascading harmonies of Vivaldi’s music, and the full
figures of Botticelli's feminine spring images in “Primavera”.
The artist’s universe would indeed be impoverished were there no spring,
coming each year laden with gifts for palette and palate, and inspiring
above all our sensual faculties, the imagination.
Ananya Vajpeyi
Radha and Krishna in a grove in Spring, Gita Govinda, Pahari School
