Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
Sun, Oct 23
|Virtual Encounter
(London 7pm, New York 2pm, Chicago 1pm, Los Angeles 11am) Presented by Joseph Luzzi
Time & Location
Oct 23, 2022, 8:00 PM GMT+2
Virtual Encounter
Guests
About the Event
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.