Botticelli's Secret

The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

By: Joseph Luzzi

Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka

A true historical “detective story” full of insight about how we look at art―and the artists and eras that produced it.

Some 500 years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a 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.

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 book is essential to explain not only how and why this artist became iconic, but why we need still need his work―and the spirit of the Renaissance―today.

©2022 Joseph Luzzi (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Not so secret

The two halves of the book are very different - the first is an entertaining but not especially original intro to Renaissance Florence in which Botticelli doesn't play a very prominent role. The second is an overview of Western attitudes towards Renaissance art. Many interesting characters appear, including Burckhardt, Pater, Ruskin, Horne and Berenson. This would be a great topic for a standalone book but the effort to tie everything back to Botticelli in general and his Dante drawings especially is unconvincing. The reader is generally fine but his habit of putting on fake accents for translated quotations is annoying.

The reader doesn’t get it…

Content is interesting so I listened to the end. The reader used a variety of accents to evidently add interest, and or credibility to the text. It became very annoying because his accents are not that great, and it interrupted the flow of the story. It may be that he assumed the listeners were novices to this type of story?

Dry style. Except for the epilogue

Interesting and well researched information but presented in a fairly dry way. Until I got to the epilogue. It made me wish he had written the entire book with a more personal style. Really made it come alive like a majority of the book did not. But it’s still worth the listen I think.

Interesting

The story is really interesting, but naration trying to make accents is really unnecesary and irritating sometimes.
Overall, I learned new things about Dante and Botticelli

A deeper understanding of that period of history

Learning more of those times and the impact of the politics of art and how the powerful few controlled it. And interesting to follow the circuitous route that artists and their work takes throughout history, and only surviving by those individuals passionate to share art with the world. I appreciated the authors epilogue, but saddened that so many great works of art are still kept from the public and are being hyper controlled within the vast riches of the Roman Catholic Church. So hypocritical and elitist. Real shame.

Highly Recommend

Great book by an outstanding author. Serves both as an overview of the time period and in-depth look at Botticelli, his art and his illustrations of Dante's wondrous poem, La Divina Commedia.

Unevenly interesting

I found the beginning of the book interesting, after that, the author dug into side roads to trace the provenance of Botticelli. When he placed things in the Florentine Renaissance, offering up tales of people that were part of the scene around Botticelli, I was interested. When he traced the scholars, I was not interested and could barely pay attention.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for.

Misleading title and poor narrator

Despite the title of my review I enjoyed this and learned a lot. While the title of the book does nothing to show its true scope (only about half the book concerns Botticelli), my real quibble is with the narrator. He does comically stereotypical accents when quoting historical people (I doubt a XVth-century Florentine would sound like a first-generation Italian immigrant to the US; just read the quote normally!) and keeps randomly pausing mid-sentence, probably to catch his breath. Shame because his timbre of voice is lovely.

Loved it!

Really enjoyed this. Art history is a hobby and learned a great deal. Might be a bit dry but still very enjoyable.

Disappointing

There are some jewels here. However they are embedded within a sea of trivialities. The writing is good but full of sloppy redundancy. Above all the phony accents are pathetic and distracting.