Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings — - Joseph Luzzi

Written by Joseph Luzzi
Read by Keith Szarabajka
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: October 25, 2022
Duration: 06:58:30

A true historical “detective story” full of insight about how we look at art and the artists and eras that produced it

Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a 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 one hundred 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 four hundred years.

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 book is essential to explain not only how and why this artist became iconic but why we still need his work and the spirit of the Renaissance today.

“Luzzi’s rich narrative delves into the biographies of Dante and Botticelli, the tumultuous Florentine culture that inspired them, and the period of Enlightenment-era obsolescence endured by both men before their rediscovery in the 19th century. Along the way, Luzzi also tracks how the illustrations disappeared after Botticelli’s death in 1510, reemerged in the 17th century, and were bought by the director of the print collection at the Royal Museum of Berlin from a profligate Scottish nobleman in 1882. Transferred to a Nazi bunker in the waning days of WWII, the drawings narrowly avoided a fire that destroyed hundreds of priceless artworks. Richly detailed and fluidly written, this is a master class in art history.”—Publishers Weekly