When Botticelli painted the Primavera in the 1470s, he opened up a veritable Pandora’s Box. No longer would Renaissance artists be limited to simply dressing Christian saints in togas and sandals, they could now gradually introduce the very literature, philosophy and religion of the ancient Greco-Roman world into their own art. This lecture will unpack Botticelli’s great allegorical painting by identifying its characters and their meaning; but it will also explore how the first Renaissance painting to ever depict a pagan subject was still loaded with Christianity.