Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
November 25, 2024
Magazzino Italian Art Presents a Talk by Joseph Luzzi, Author of Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
Publication Chronicles the Life and Work of One of the Greatest Painters of the 15th Century
December 8, 2024
Cold Spring, NY, November 25, 2024—On Sunday, December 8, 2024, Magazzino Italian Art, in collaboration with the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley, will host author Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, who will discuss his widely acclaimed recent book Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Society Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Botticelli’s Secret examines how the Florentine Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli rose from humble origins to create renowned works such as Primavera and The Birth of Venus and then, despite his achievements, declined into poverty and obscurity. All but forgotten for some four hundred years, he abruptly rose again, to greater fame than ever, in the 19th century, when his drawings for a massive, unfinished commission from the Medici family—a set of illustrations for all one hundred cantos of Dante’s The Divine Comedy—were rediscovered after having been lost for centuries.
A combination of artistic detective story and rich intellectual history, Botticelli’s Secret (a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and a Guardian Book of the Day) shows not only how the Renaissance came to life, but also how Botticelli’s art helped bring it about and, most important, why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today.
Event Details
Sunday, December 8 at 12pm
Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY
Tickets are $10 and include a free coffee from Café Silvia and museum admission
About Magazzino Italian Art
Magazzino Italian Art is a museum and research center dedicated to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. Located in Cold Spring, New York, the museum was founded by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu.
In 2017, the first building, designed by architect Miguel Quismondo and set within several landscaped acres of the Hudson Highlands, was inaugurated with an exhibition drawn from the Olnick Spanu Collection and dedicated to Margherita Stein, founder of the historic Galleria Christian Stein in Milan and a key advocate and supporter of the artists associated with Arte Povera.
In 2023, Magazzino inaugurated the Research Center, named for the art critic and historian who gave Arte Povera its name.
Created as an educational not for profit museum, Magazzino Italian Art increased its indoor space by two-thirds in September 2023 by opening the freestanding Robert Olnick Pavilion designed by architects Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo and named in memory of philanthropist and art advocate Robert Olnick. This new building provides a multipurpose room with auditorium capabilities, a store, and Café Silvia serving Italian specialties.
About Joseph Luzzi
Joseph Luzzi received his PhD from Yale University and is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, where he also teaches courses on film and Italian Studies. He is the author of five books, including his most recent work, Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (Norton, 2022), a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 selection that was shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. His other books include 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 multiple languages. Joseph’s honors include a Wallace Fellowship from Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, a Yale College teaching prize, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award, and fellowships from the National Humanities Center and Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. The first American-born child in his Italian immigrant family, Joseph was named Cittadino Onorario / Honorary Citizen of Acri, Calabria, in 2017. A widely sought after speaker, Joseph has presented worldwide on literature, art, film, and the power of the humanities.
About the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley
The Harvard-Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley represents about 1,000 Harvard-affiliated alumni, faculty, staff, and students in the mid-Hudson Valley. The Club, a charitable organization, sponsors a range of educational and cultural events, many open to the public. Club volunteers also interview area high school students who are applying to Harvard College.