SANDRO BOTICELLI DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY, DRAWINGS by KENNETH CLARK/BIG 1976 1st

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THE DRAWINGS BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI FOR DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY: AFTER THE ORIGINALS IN THE BERLIN MUSEUMS AND THE VATICAN. BY KENNETH CLARK. New York : Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976. First U.S. Edition. Scarce. A solid and attractive scarce book. Published nearly 40 years ago, this edition is now long out of print and hard to find. From the dust jacket: "Toward the end of the 15th century -- perhaps in 1492 -- Sandro Botticelli, whom Berenson called "one of the greatest masters of the single line our modern western world has ever had," made a series of drawing for Dante's Divine comedy, a subject with which he had been obsessed for twenty years. Ninety-two of these drawings survive; seven are in the Vatican Library (purchased from Queen Christina of Sweden) and the rest, brought in London in 1882 by the German art-historian Lippmann, are now divided between the State Museums of East and West Berlin. They range in size from 32 by 37 cm (12 1/2 by 18 1/2 inches) to 63 by 47cm (24 2/3 by 18 1/2 inches), and they are virtually unknown to the art-loving public. Five years after his epochal coup, Dr. Lippmann issued a portfolio of full-size facsimile reproductions, a volume Kenneth Clark accurately describes as a "billiard -table book." Later attempts to present the drawings have simply re-engraved Lippmann's facsimiles, often on so reduced a scale as to be meaningless. Now, for the first time since 1887, those ninety-two drawings have been newly reproduced from the originals by the most sophisticated and painstaking processes and have been only slightly reduced in size for the sake of the reader's convenience. Furthermore, the handful which Botticelli himself colored are here reproduced in all their incomparable radiance. The result is not only a supremely beautiful book but in authentic and singular event, immeasurably enhanced by Lord Clark's eloquent and richly informative text which is in turn illustrated with other artists' versions of the same or related themes. The drawings themselves are accompanied by appropriate selections from John Ciardi's translation of The Divine Comedy and by commentaries on the character and events the drawings depict. Here is a universe of wonders, infused by "the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars." According to Wikipedia: "Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, known as Sandro Botticelli (Italian: [ˈsandro bottiˈtʃɛlli]/[ˈs̪än̪ː.d̪r̺o bo.t̪ːi.ˈt͡ʃɛ.l̺ːi]; c. 1445[1] – May 17, 1510), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera. In later life, Botticelli was one of the followers of the deeply moralistic friar Girolamo Savonarola who preached in Florence from 1490 until his execution in 1498, though the full extent of Savonarola's influence remains uncertain.[6] "Like much of Florence, Botticelli had come under the sway of Savonarola and his art had transformed from the decorative to the deeply devout – The Mystical Nativity (c. 1500–1501) [for example] bears all the signs of this change"[7] "The story that he burnt his own paintings on pagan themes in the notorious "Bonfire of the Vanities" is not told by Vasari, who nevertheless asserts that of the sect of Savonarola "he was so ardent a partisan that he was thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to live on, fell into very great distress. For this reason, persisting in his attachment to that party, and becoming a Piagnone[8] he abandoned his work." Botticelli biographer Ernst Steinmann searched for the artist's psychological development through his Madonnas. In the "deepening of insight and ex... read more

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