Spring begins with Botticelli

Titles of old paintings tend to be modern inventions, coined by galleries or popular culture. Hans Holbein did not call his picture of two French Renaissance gents The Ambassadors. But very early in its history, Sandro Botticelli's depiction of the goddess Venus, raising her hand in blessing over a gathering of mythological followers, acquired the name it bears today: La Primavera. It's a lovely word, the Italian for spring – and there's a good chance this is what Botticelli called it when he first unveiled it to the Medicis in 1481.

I have to confess a bias when it comes to this painting: my daughter is named after it. And why not? It was a proper girl's name in Renaissance Italy, meaning rebirth, youth, beauty, life, everything Botticelli's spring is about.

It is also the perfect painting to herald the start of spring. Over the next few weeks, I will be choosing an artwork a day to celebrate the season on the Guardian's art and design site, beginning with Botticelli. There will be images of violence as well as joy: traditionally, armies fought their campaigns in the spring, so battle paintings tend to be set in May and June. And there will be Jeff Koons: all the floral silliness of spring is celebrated in his giant Puppy, sculpted from topiary and flowers.

Who does the season best? Monet and the impressionists captured spring's effervescent changes acutely. Van Gogh's paintings of fruit trees in blossom contain a desperate passion that is pure Vincent. William Blake, too, earns a place, for his picture of Chaucer's pilgrims heading out on a spring day, when April's sweet showers have ended the drought of March.

Botticelli's Primavera was one of the first large-scale European paintings to tell a story that was not Christian, replacing the agony of Easter with a pagan rite. The very idea of art as a pleasure, and not a sermon, began in this meadow. The painting teems with life: the myriad shades of the flowers in the dark grass have been analysed by botanists, who identified 200 accurately depicted plants. Blue-skinned Zephyrus, spirit of the wind, chases Chloris, who transforms into Flora in her flowering dress, while the Three Graces dance, Mercury waves a wand and Cupid gets ready to fire an arrow.

The goddess of love stands at the centre, crowned by radiating foliage against the blue sky. This is the season of Venus, when flowers bud and birds sing. In the world Botticelli inhabited, everyone lived close to nature whether they wanted to or not and the season of natural renewal was seen as a time for lovers and courtship. In Florence, young men cut down flowering boughs and pinned them to the doors of women they loved. (Botticelli's friend Poliziano even wrote a Renaissance pop song about spring lovers: "Welcome spring/ Which wants a guy to fall in love/ And you, girls/ Come to the fresh cool shade/ Of the green growing trees.")

The miracle of Botticelli's painting is that it translates all this life-renewing joy into colours and figures. The cool shade of the green trees sets off pale limbs, blond hair, gauzes and bright robes gliding over the carpet of flowers. The season is at once warmed by the sun and cooled by breezes. It is an image of life unstoppable.

Spring has since become a very self-conscious part of European culture, a great cliche of rebirth for modernists to mock. TS Eliot shuddered at spring in The Waste Land ("April is the cruellest month") and Stravinsky shocked ballet audiences with his Rite of Spring. In the end, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Botticelli's painting is its power to transcend cliche, all the pretty daffodils and the sentimentality, remaining remote, powerful and pagan. Watch out: Venus is rising.