Zéphyros through the eyes of sculptors, painters, and craftsmen across the ages
Primavera — Zephyr and Chloris — Botticelli, c. 1482, Uffizi: the blue-grey west wind bursts through the dark wood to seize the nymph Chloris, flowers already spilling from her lips as Ovid's rape turns to marriage mid-gust.
The Birth of Venus — Zephyr and Chloris — Botticelli, c. 1485, Uffizi: locked in his consort's arms, the west wind blows the newborn goddess to shore on a soft, rose-bearing breath — the gentlest face of Zephyros ever painted.
Zephyrus on the Tower of the Winds — marble frieze of the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes, Athens, c. 100–50 BC: among the eight sculpted winds, the westerly one flies as a bare-limbed youth, his cloak brimming with the flowers of spring he scatters.
Zephyrus and Hyakinthos — Attic red-figure kylix from Tarquinia, manner of Douris, c. 490–485 BC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: the winged west wind enfolds the Spartan youth he loved — and whose discus death his jealousy would cause.
The Triumph of Zephyr and Flora — Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c. 1734–35, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice: a ceiling drowned in rose-light where the wind-god's tempest dissolves into garlands, the storm wed to the blossom.
Flora Caressed by Zephyr — François Gérard, 1802, Musée de Grenoble: Neoclassical stillness as the west wind stoops over the goddess of flowers, Ovid's violence refined into a single caress.
Flora and the Zephyrs — John William Waterhouse, 1898: the goddess walks in white while the little winds tumble roses across her path — the Zephyr myth softened, at the century's end, to pure perfume.
