EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | "Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance"
Presented by Dr. Joe Luzzi
with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

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.

The webinar will include a 45-minute lecture followed by 15-minutes of Q&A.

Please note:

• Your participation is confirmed once you have purchased your ticket. You will receive the Zoom link to join the presentation circa 30 minutes before the start time.
• VIDEO RECORDING of the webinar will be available for unlimited streaming at your convenience for 7 days after the event.

Joseph Luzzi (PhD Yale) is Professor of Comparative Literature and Faculty Member in Italian Studies at Bard College and was recently a Wallace Fellow at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti, where he was writing a cultural history of Dante’s Divine Comedy that will appear with Princeton University Press. He is the author of Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (Yale University Press, 2008), which received the MLA’s Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies; A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), a finalist for the international prize “The Bridge Book” Award; My Two Italies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love(HarperCollins, 2015), which has been translated into Italian, German, and Korean.