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

Description

Joseph Luzzi, a professor of literature at Bard College, will give a talk titled "Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance" for the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures' Italian Program.

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 19th-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. Together, we will see how and why Botticelli became iconic, but why we need still need his work―and the spirit of the Renaissance―today.