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On-Line/Live Event
FREE WEBINAR | “Botticelli’s Mythological Paintings” with Dr. Rocky Ruggiero
July 15, 2025
1 hour
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR BUNDLE
“Exclusive Webinars in September”
Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero and special guests Dr. Joe Luzzi, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, and Susan Jaques
Dates & Times:
Thursday, September 4, 11, 18 & 25, 2025
2:00 – 3:00pm ET | 11:00am – 12:00pm PT |
7:00 – 8:00pm London
EXCLUSIVE WEBINARS | "Exclusive Webinars in September"
Each webinar will include a 45-minute lecture followed by 15-minutes of Q&A.
Please note:
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | "The Lives of Beatrice: The Muse Who Made Us Modern"
Presented by Dr. Joe Luzzi
In this presentation, Professor Luzzi will explore the centuries-old unresolved question: who was Dante’s muse, Beatrice? Looking beyond Dante’s mythmaking, Luzzi considers the historical reality of the young Florentine woman Beatrice Portinari who first inspired Dante to write poetry and then sent him into a personal (and artistic) crisis when she died tragically at the age of 24, before eventually being poetically resurrected by Dante decades later in his epic The Divine Comedy. Luzzi will then discuss how this “muse” figure of Beatrice would go on to shape modern notions of female identity in later authors ranging from Petrarch and Cervantes to the English Pre-Raphaelites and James Joyce.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | "Thunderbolts and Lightning: The Pope, Galileo, the Church and Science" Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?
Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo, (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro, magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, 1975
The Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) got into monstrous trouble with the Holy Inquisition thanks to his affirmation that the Copernican concept of the solar system was correct. This heliocentric model held that the sun was at the center of the solar system and the earth (and other planets) orbited around it. Heliocentrism was in direct conflict with the then widely accepted ancient belief in a geocentric cosmology with the unmoving earth at the center of creation. This idea was most famously expressed by the Alexandrian astronomer and astrologer, Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100-c. 165 CE).
The trials of Galileo for the heresy of Copernican heliocentrism marked the apotheosis of a perceived centuries-long pattern of opposition by the Church to a scientific explanation for the observable world. This conflict extended beyond cosmology to essentially all scientific disciplines including medicine. A well-known medieval aphorism speaks to this conflict, ubi tres medici, duo athei, in other words, when you have three physicians (or scientists) two of them will be godless atheists!
Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, as we explore the relationship of the Church and science at the dawn of the modern scientific revolution through the lens (pun intended) of Galileo‘s two trials for heresy. Was there nothing but enmity between science and the sacred and was the Church and the papacy always in opposition to the ideas of men of science such as Galileo? Or is the truth more nuanced and more complex? Buckle up for a ride through the intertwined history of the Church and science with Thunderbolts and Lightning: The Pope, Galileo, the Church and Science.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | "Raiding the Hermitage"
Presented by Susan Jaques
Desperate for cash during the Great Depression, Joseph Stalin secretly sold part of his country’s cultural patrimony -- paintings, jewelry, and Faberge eggs -- to the highest bidders. Ignoring a trade embargo with the Soviet Union, U.S. treasury secretary Andrew Mellon struck a clandestine deal in 1930 to buy twenty-one masterpieces from the Hermitage. The septuagenarian art collector hid the paintings in the basement of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. before ultimately donating them to the National Gallery of Art, his gift to the nation. "Raiding the Hermitage" will explore this little-known purchase and the masterpieces that became part of the National Gallery's founding collection. The treasure trove of Old Masters includes five Italian Renaissance gems acquired by Catherine the Great and her grandsons Alexander I and Nicholas I: Botticelli's The Adoration of the Magi, Raphael's Alba Madonna and St. George and the Dragon, Titian's Venus with a Mirror, and Veronese's The Finding of Moses.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | "The Muses Behind the Masters"
Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero
Many of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance were inspired by women. Whether it was the “Marilyn Monroe of the Renaissance,” Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, inspiring Botticelli, the Dominican nun, Lucrezia Buti, inspiring Fra Lippo Lippi, the adulterous Lucrezia del Fede inspiring Andrea del Sarto, or the licentious Fornarina inspiring Raphael, these women were the veritable muses behind the masters. Join Dr. Rocky as he explores the intriguing, romantic, entertaining, and often scandalous relationships between celebrated Italian Renaissance artists and their inspirational muses.
