On Sunday, December 8, 2024, Magazzino Italian Art, in collaboration with the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley, hosted author Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, who discussed his widely acclaimed recent book Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Society Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Botticelli’s Secret examines how the Florentine Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli rose from humble origins to create renowned works such as Primavera and The Birth of Venus and then, despite his achievements, declined into poverty and obscurity. All but forgotten for some four hundred years, he abruptly rose again, to greater fame than ever, in the 19th century, when his drawings for a massive, unfinished commission from the Medici family—a set of illustrations for all one hundred cantos of Dante’s The Divine Comedy—were rediscovered after having been lost for centuries.
A combination of artistic detective story and rich intellectual history, Botticelli’s Secret (a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and a Guardian Book of the Day) shows not only how the Renaissance came to life, but also how Botticelli’s art helped bring it about and, most important, why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today.
