Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182461 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-30
• Original language: German
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli is probably best known for The Birth of Venus and Primavera, two commissions for the young Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. The same delicate, rhythmic line and fanciful imagination can be found in another project for this patron--an unfinished set of drawings from the 1480s that illustrate The Divine Comedy, Dante's chronicle of his vividly imagined travels through the Inferno and Purgatory to Paradise. For those familiar with the jewel-like colours of Botticelli's paintings, it may come as a shock that many of the 92 drawings that survive are very faint preliminary sketches. (They were made with a metal point on sheep parchment, sometimes touched up with pen and ink. A few have been coloured in.) But just as the poet Virgil serves as the 35-year-old epic hero's indispensable guide, the astute running commentary in this book helps modern readers perceive how Botticelli subtly evokes the hero's feelings. "Botticelli's Dante is guided above all by his eyes," writes Hein-Thomas Schultze Altcappenberg, chief curator of Berlin's Kupferstichkabinett. "[They] are literally opened in proportion to his enlightenment, until his vision ultimately dissolves in an image of pure beauty, liberated from constraints of time and space."

By showing multiple views of the characters in a single drawing, Botticelli portrays Dante's successive reactions to what he sees and Virgil's responses to his charge's state of mind. And by giving every group of doomed souls a distinctive gesture or expression, he follows the poet's lead in illuminating both the individual and the universal. Published to accompany the exhibition of the same title that has been shown in Berlin and Rome and continues at the Royal Academy of Arts in London through June, 2001, this book represents a triumph of accessible scholarship, intelligent design and deeply rewarding content. --Cathy Curtis

Synopsis
An exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts, opening March 2001, assembles the 91 extant drawings, executed some time during the 1480s, by Sandro Botticelli to illustrate Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy". This is the accompanying catalogue, including a commentary and seven essays.

Customer Reviews

The perfect companion to the Divine Comedy... or great on its own
Sandro Botticelli was a master Florentine painter of what is now known as the Early Renaissance. In this book can be found an extensive collection of his numerous works created to illustrate Dante's divine Comedy. The works will be instantly familiar to any of Botticelli's admirers.

Botticelli was not a contemporary of Dante, and because of this, Botticelli's illustrations were not created alongside the text or with any input from Dante himself, but Botticelli's illustrations are the most recognisable and renowned illustrations to the Comedy. Many editions of Dante's Opus Magnum come with a limited set of very much scaled down copies of Botticelli's work, but in this book you can see *all* of the remaining illustrations by Botticelli which is almost all of those that were completed. Even better, they are of a size and quality that allows the reader to study the pictures in great detail and with ease.

The book also comes with extensive (although not exhaustive nor too lengthy) notes on the artwork as well as a running commentary on what is happening at that point in Dante's Comedy. This makes the book essential not only for lovers of Botticelli's work, but also for fans of Dante, as well as being useful as a quick reference for the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It's a 'must have', no matter what your interest might be.