Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
Book by Joseph Luzzi
DETAILS
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company (October 25, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 352 pages ISBN-10 : 1324004010 ISBN-13 : 978-1324004011 Item Weight : 1.18 pounds Dimensions : 5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches Best Sellers Rank: #15,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Italian History (Books) #16 in Arts & Photography Criticism #34 in Art History (Books) , A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 So Far “Brilliantly conceived and executed, Botticelli's Secret is a riveting search for buried treasure.” ―Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence’s art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city’s powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that “divine” poet. This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious and the secular, between the earthly and the evanescent, recorded in exquisite drawings by Botticelli that now enchant audiences worldwide. Yet after a lifetime of creating masterpieces including Primavera and The Birth of Venus , Botticelli declined into poverty and obscurity. His Dante project remained unfinished. Then the drawings vanished for over four hundred years. The once famous Botticelli himself was forgotten. The nineteenth-century rediscovery of Botticelli’s Dante drawings brought scholars and art lovers to their knees: this work embodied everything the Renaissance had come to mean. From Botticelli’s metaphorical rise from the dead in Victorian England to the emergence of eagle-eyed connoisseurs like Bernard Berenson and Herbert Horne in the early twentieth century, and even the rescue of precious art during World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the posthumous story of Botticelli’s Dante drawings is, if anything, even more dramatic than their creation. A combination of artistic detective story and rich intellectual history, Botticelli’s Secret shows not only how the Renaissance came to life, but also how Botticelli’s art helped bring it about―and, most important, why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today. 16 pages of color illustrations Read more
REVIEW
I have always wondered what was in the soup, water or wine in Florence Italy during the Renaissance to produce arguably the greatest artists of all time. Botticelli's Secret provides some revealing answers plus takes us along on a treasure hunt for a precious artifact from the period. The everyday living of the artists comes alive with realistic descriptions of what it was like to exist among young geniuses in their schools and store fronts. How, at times, they were both friends and enemies, competing for the next rich assignment from a patron. Slipping through this glorious chaos was a set of drawings illustrating 100 cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy. They did not resurface until 400 years later, slipped away again, and next made appearances after WWII and when the Berlin Wall fell. This book made me feel like I was there and is an overall great read.
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