Author: Altcappenberg, Hein-Th. Schulze et al.
Title: Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy
Description: London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2000. Hardcover. Dray gray stamped cloth, tan pictorial dust jacket, figured flyleaves, 360 pp. many illus.; weighs 5.5 lbs. In the 1480s, the great Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli [1445-1510] was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy, the masterpiece that laid the foundations of Italian literature. Botticelli's genius as a pictorial narrator made him ideally suited to the commission; he followed the text closely, giving visual form to the poet's epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Left unfinished, possibly as a result of the flight of the Medici from a turbulent Florence in 1497, the cycle of illustrations had been split up by the mid-17th century. Some sheets made their way to the Vatican at the time, others came to England and eventually passed to Berlin in 1882. (Divided by the Berlin Wall after World War II, the Berlin sheets have only recently been reunited.) Today, eight-five sheets belong to the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and seven to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Over 500 years after their creation, all the extant drawings will be shown together for the first time at the Kulturforum, Berlin, the Scuderie Papli al Qurinale, Rome, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Each is illustrated in full colour in the catalogue and accompanied by a commentary on Botticelli's response to Dante's poem. They are followed by seven authoritative essays on aspects of Botticelli's and Dante's work, on Divine Comedy illustration in general and on the technique of Botticelli's drawings, illustrated in full colour throughout." (dj) Lovely!. VG/VG: Exlibrary book. Stamp on dust jacket at the base of the spine. Stamp on front free end page. Stamp on back free end page. Sticker and due date card on back pasted end page. Stamps on top and bottom text blocks.

Keywords: European Artists ; Botticelli, Sandro ; ;


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