Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
Guest Lectures
•
58m
In this talk, we will explore a true Renaissance “Whoddunit.” Some 500 years ago, Sandro Botticelli, an Italian painter of humble origin, created work of unearthly beauty. An intimate associate of Florence’s unofficial rulers, the Medici, he was commissioned by a member of their family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy by the city’s greatest poet, Dante Alighieri. A powerful encounter between poet and artist, sacred and secular, earthly and evanescent, these drawings produced a wealth of stunning images but were never finished. Botticelli declined into poverty and obscurity, and his illustrations went missing for 400 years. This presentation will show how the nineteenth-century rediscovery of Botticelli’s Dante drawings brought scholars to their knees: this work embodied everything the Renaissance had come to mean. Today, Botticelli’s Primavera adorns household objects of every kind. This talk will show how and why Botticelli became iconic, and why we need still need his work―and the spirit of the Renaissance―today.
Up Next in Guest Lectures
-
Brides, Grooms & the Visual Culture o...
Brides, Grooms, and the Visual Culture of Betrothal and Marriage in Renaissance Italy
Marriage in Renaissance Italy involved careful negotiations between families, exchanges of gifts, and commissions for furnishings and works of art to decorate a new couple’s home. This talk will explore images ...
-
Connoisseurship,Criticism&Collecting ...
Connoisseurship, Criticism and Collecting in the Gilded Age: Remembering Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson is known to many in the field of Italian Renaissance art as an American connoisseur, critic, and aesthetic theorist. Born in Lithuania, Berenson grew up in Boston and entered Harvard in 18...
-
How Can this be Done: The Miracle of ...
How Can this be Done: The Miracle of the Annunciation Versus the Facts of Life in Renaissance Painting
The Annunciation, observed on March 25, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that she would conceive and bear a son. The Bible...
