Primavera
1482 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Venus stands in an orange grove while the Graces dance and spring arrives at her right. The meadow holds hundreds of identifiable plants.
★ 9.8
Browse by time · decade
1480s
1480 – 1489
Showing 13 works across all media from the 1480s
The Birth of Venus
1486 · Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Venus arrives on a scallop shell in a fall of roses, painted on canvas at a time when almost everyone still worked on panel.
★ 9.7
The Seduction of Yusuf
1488 · Egyptian National Library, Cairo
Zulaykha shuts the last door behind Yusuf, and Bihzad turns the palace into a honeycomb of tile and stairs as taut as the story.
★ 8.2
Saint Francis in Ecstasy
1480 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Francis steps barefoot from his hermitage into a light coming from the left, and Bellini gives him no seraph and barely any wounds.
★ 8.0
Madonna of the Rocks
1485 · Louvre, Paris
Leonardo painted this cave twice after falling out with the patrons. This is the earlier version, the one that stayed in France.
★ 8.0
Le Morte d'Arthur
1485 · 576 pages
Arthur pulls the sword from the stone and the finest knights come to his table, until his wife's love for Lancelot brings it down. Every Camelot since comes from Malory.
★ 7.4
Venus and Mars
1483 · National Gallery, London
Mars sleeps the sleep of the spent lover while satyrs make off with his lance, one blowing a conch in his ear without waking him.
★ 7.2
San Sebastian
1480 · Louvre, Paris
Sebastian takes his arrows with the composure of a statue, tied to a Roman column in a field of accurately ruined antiquity.
★ 6.6
The Fall of Man
1480 · Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The serpent stands upright against the tree with a near-human face, and every leaf in the garden is catalogued one by one.
★ 6.5
The Last Supper (Ghirlandaio)
1480 · Cenacolo di Ognissanti, Florence
Painted on a refectory wall so the monks dined at the end of the same table. Leonardo would blow the arrangement apart a few years later.
★ 5.2
The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.
Le Morte d'Arthur · 1485
Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.
Le Morte d'Arthur · 1485
The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit.
Le Morte d'Arthur · 1485