Three young female figures sit gathered in a flowering field, so close that they seem like one body divided into three presences. Crowns of pale and orange flowers merge with their copper-red hair, while their light garments, barely stirred, make the scene feel suspended between stillness and apparition. The central figure holds the composition like a silent axis; the two beside her lean toward her in a gesture that is intimate, ritual, and regal all at once. Around them, the field of marigolds and white flowers is not merely background: it is the very throne upon which nature crowns its sovereign.

This work stages Flora, the Roman goddess of blooming, spring, and the generative force of nature. In the history of Western art, Flora crosses the centuries as an image of abundance, rebirth, and fertile grace: from ancient painting to the Renaissance, and memorably in Botticelli, where her flower-clad body becomes almost a direct manifestation of spring itself. Here, however, Flora does not appear as a single isolated figure: the two nymphs at her sides join her in a sort of natural trinity. Together, the three girls embody the joy of life, fertility, and the power of blossoming, transforming the goddess into a choral presence — broader and more human.

The work is inspired in particular by marigolds, flowers linked to sunlight, warmth, constancy of blooming, and, in many folk traditions, also to protection and vitality. For this reason, the scene speaks not only of beauty, but of returning energy, cyclic renewal, and a gentle, unstoppable force. The throne is not a symbol of domination, but of fullness: here royalty coincides with the ability to generate, nourish, and make things bloom again.

In this image, femininity is not idealized as distant perfection. It is, rather, a form of vital power: creative, fragile, and at once untamable. The Throne of Flora, from which all the other flower artworks seem to radiate and almost take shape, thus becomes a hymn to rebirth and to that deep grace that continues to re-emerge, season after season, in every form of life.

Comment on the Art Perfume, by Riccardo Barazzetta:

Composing “Flora” was the most ambitious work of this exhibition. The accompanying drawing represents the very concept of “florality”, so my first idea was to create a range of floral aromas, aiming to harmonize together as many of them as possible. This initial hypothesis was quickly abandoned, given its infeasibility.

In order to create a perfume so complex with its infinite possibilities and aromatic nuances, I preferred to face the work analytically and minimally, focusing only on the flowers most used in women’s perfumery. I thus compiled a list of ingredients for a perfume with exclusively floral accords, which best represented the concept of “feminine flower”.

Since the related drawing depicts three lightly-dressed female subjects in a lush field filled with flowers reminiscent of marigolds, I gave greater prominence to the flowers associated with the warm seasons and the so-called “colourful” ones, which are usually also the most aromatic.

In order of importance, there are: rose, jasmine, orris and ylang-ylang, all enveloped by the “evergreen” note of neroli. The additional molecule of hedione is placed at the heart of the perfume as a “medium and neutral” floral note, to which all the others are linked.