Focus on Spring (painting) and explore the Description.
The tall, narrow painting depicts a procession of women and children along a Roman street and down some marble steps.  Spectators cheer from the classical buildings of polychrome marble to either side, some throwing down flowers.  The participants in the procession are garlanded with bright flowers, with some also bearing baskets of flowers or branches of blossom, and other playing musical instruments: a flute, pan pipes, and tambourines.  The choice of flowers in the painting seems to be driven more by aesthetic and colour considerations than the symbolic meanings of the Victorian language of flowers.Towards the rear of the procession is a bearded priest holding a metal jug, with other attendants carrying a casket, a torch, and a large portable ivory altar which is emerging from the building to the right.  Other attendants bear two silver sculptures of a horned satyr with a child and fruit, and two more hold poles with a banner slung between, bearing a Latin fragment (then attributed to Catullus, known as Carmina Catulli 8): "Hunc lucum tibi dedico consecroque, Priape / qua domus tua Lampsacist quaque silva, Priape/ nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora / Hellespontia ceteris ostreosior oris" (loosely translated: "This enclosure I dedicate and consecrate to thee, Priapus / At Lampsacus where is thy home and sacred grove, Priapus / For thee specially in its coastal cities are you worshipped / Of Hellespont more abundant in oysters than all other coasts").
Many of the participants and spectators were modelled by Alma-Tadema's friends or members of his family.  They include the bearded composer George Henschel and his daughter Helen, high on a balcony to the right.  A bearded bust to the lower left may be a self-portrait of Alma-Tadema, beside the base of  a column where the painting is signed and numbered: " L Alma Tadema Op CCCXXVI".
The surrounding scene is an architectural capriccio, not a single known location but rather combining parts of known Roman buildings from several different locations=.  To the left rear is a triumphal arch, with an inscription taken from the Arch of Trajan at Benevento, 130 mi (210 km) southeast of Rome; its spandrel is decorated with a river god based on the Arch of Constantine, but unusually accompanied by a sheep and bull (for Aries and Taurus, denoting April and May).   A building to the left has a frieze showing the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs.  Visible to the rear are two bronze equestrian statues, based on marble statues from Pompeii.
The painting measures 178.4 cm × 80.3 cm (70.2 in × 31.6 in) and retains its original, heavy gilded architectural frame, also designed by the artist, with pilasters and a triangular pediment.  The frame above the painting displays its title, "Spring", and the bottom of the frame has four lines of poetry from Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1865 poem "Dedication" written in honour of the painter Edward Burne-Jones: "In a land of clear colours and stories, / In a region of shadowless hours, / Where earth has a garment of glories / And a murmur of musical flowers".
Lampsacus Arch of Trajan Aries river god satyr Hellespont language of flowers equestrian statue Benevento spandrel triumphal arch left Arch of Constantine Priapus Lapiths Algernon Charles Swinburne Taurus Pompeii capriccio Catullus Centaur Edward Burne-Jones Centaurs George Henschel