Spring is near. “Spring it is that clothes the glades and forests with leaves … and the meadows ungirdle to Zephyrus’s (the West Wind’s) balmy breeze; the tender moisture avails for all,” wrote Virgil in his “Georgics.” The Palace of Versailles couldn’t have picked a more apt time to exhibit one of the last masterpieces that the Sun King, Louis XIV, commissioned, which is now back at Versailles, for the sculpture “Zephyr, Flora, and Love” represents spring itself. Carved in marble, the handsome winged youth Zephyrus, god of the west winds, gracefully descends from the heavens to greet his wife, Flora. Both are in the presence of “Love,” who appears at the bottom of the sculptural group as a young boy perhaps showing the purity of love. Ovid described how Zephyrus first saw the nymph Flora in Elysium and named her his bride. Ovid wrote as if he were Flora: “I have no …
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