Botticelli's Secret

The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

By: Joseph Luzzi

Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka

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

Some 500 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 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.

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 need still need his work―and the spirit of the Renaissance―today.

©2022 Joseph Luzzi (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Not so secret

The two halves of the book are very different - the first is an entertaining but not especially original intro to Renaissance Florence in which Botticelli doesn't play a very prominent role. The second is an overview of Western attitudes towards Renaissance art. Many interesting characters appear, including Burckhardt, Pater, Ruskin, Horne and Berenson. This would be a great topic for a standalone book but the effort to tie everything back to Botticelli in general and his Dante drawings especially is unconvincing. The reader is generally fine but his habit of putting on fake accents for translated quotations is annoying.

Interesting

The story is really interesting, but naration trying to make accents is really unnecesary and irritating sometimes.
Overall, I learned new things about Dante and Botticelli

A deeper understanding of that period of history

Learning more of those times and the impact of the politics of art and how the powerful few controlled it. And interesting to follow the circuitous route that artists and their work takes throughout history, and only surviving by those individuals passionate to share art with the world. I appreciated the authors epilogue, but saddened that so many great works of art are still kept from the public and are being hyper controlled within the vast riches of the Roman Catholic Church. So hypocritical and elitist. Real shame.

Loved it!

Really enjoyed this. Art history is a hobby and learned a great deal. Might be a bit dry but still very enjoyable.

Disappointing

There are some jewels here. However they are embedded within a sea of trivialities. The writing is good but full of sloppy redundancy. Above all the phony accents are pathetic and distracting.