Welcome to The DeepRead, dedicated to book lovers & Italophiles
Cari amici / Dear friends,
I hope you are all healthy and well. As always, it's a pleasure to share recent news and ideas – thank you for the joy of ongoing conversation.
Felice Anno Nuovo / Happy New Year,
Joseph
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Botticelli's portrait of Dante's Satan |
Dante in Piazza Santa Croce |
Renaissance ms. of the Comedy
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Guardian Book of the Day! |
This news came soon after Botticelli's Secret was selected for the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022. It's also been especially gratifying to receive extremely encouraging reviews like the following:
“In this wide-ranging history, Luzzi considers why the drawings, which illustrated eighty-eight cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, had fallen into oblivion, and charts both Dante’s and Botticelli’s reputations across the ages.”
"Undaunted, Joseph Luzzi, a professor of comparative literature at Bard College, has undertaken the complex narrative [about Botticelli's lost Dante illustrations] with erudition and passion in his new book, BOTTICELLI'S SECRET..."
"The research that has gone into this book is impressive and inspiring. Anyone who wants a short dramatic book about Renaissance Florence should reach for this title first. Luzzi has written so much more than the story of one artist’s fascinating commission. He’s created a vivid portrait of culture, politics, and daily life in the city that has become the very image of Renaissance history."
“ ‘Botticelli’s Secret’ brilliantly sets the operatic stage of vibrant, violent Renaissance Florence and brings to life the characters who helped resurrect Botticelli in the 19th and 20th centuries...”
“In Botticelli’s Secret, Luzzi combines a primer on Dante and his reception in Florence with a short biography of Botticelli and the story of the works’ posthumous physical and reputational journey.”
“Luzzi brings his extensive knowledge of Dante and Italian history to a richly detailed investigation of the creation, reception, and afterlife of Botticelli’s second project...A fresh perspective on an iconic artist and his time.”
“Richly detailed and fluidly written, this is a master class in art history.”
I would love to hear your thoughts on Botticelli's Secret! ! If you enjoyed the book and have a moment to spare, I would really appreciate a short review as this helps new readers find my books, click here to leave your review...
Grazie mille!
Joseph
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Billion Dollar Paintings? |
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Botticelli, Birth of Venus
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The Value of "Priceless" Art...
I often wonder what the monetary value of works like these would be...recently, Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, a disputed work far less revered than either of Botticelli's two masterpieces, sold for a jaw-dropping $450 million, the most ever paid for an art work. Can you imagine what Primavera and The Birth of Venus would garner? I'm guessing either could be the world's first "billion dollar" art sale – thankfully, that scenario is improbable, as the works will remain for all of us to enjoy in the Uffizi. But their majesty and renown do make one think about the price that people are willing to pay for some of the most astonishing works ever to issue from human hands. In that spirit, please enjoy the following excerpt from Botticelli's Secret on how works like Botticelli's masterpieces can literally take your breath away, as past visitors have fainted before their otherworldly beauty...
Each year, about four million visitors fill the twin corridors of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, Vasari’s greatest architectural work and the world’s preeminent collection of Renaissance art. For some, the encounter with sublime painting by the likes of Giotto, Michelangelo, and Leonardo is so overwhelming that it causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, even fainting, as they experience Stendhal’s Syndrome, the debilitating effect of profound beauty first described by the great French novelist (and Florentine tourist) after whom the condition is named. Perhaps nowhere is the aesthetic concentration more disorienting than in galleries 10 to 14, the Botticelli Rooms. The shutters whirl and the selfie sticks fly as viewers gape at Primavera and The Birth of Venus, enormous paintings whose frolicking gods and goddesses are now reproduced on everything from priceless jewelry to cheap key chains and dorm room posters infused with marijuana smoke—even Lady Gaga’s ribcage. The pop icon wore a Dolce and Gabbana dress festooned with The Birth of Venus to promote her single “Venus” in 2013, making her one of many women, real or imagined like the character Odette in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, to evoke the term “Botticellian.” [excerpt from Botticelli's Secret]
A SMALL FAVOR TO ASK...
If you enjoyed this excerpt and Botticelli's Secret, I would greatly appreciate a brief review on Amazon at this link. The number of reviews a book receives on a daily basis helps me spread the word about the power of great art like Botticelli's – grazie e buona lettura / thank you & happy reading!
Joseph
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Two New Literary Seminars! |
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Coming soon...
The Middlemarch & Moby-Dick Seminars!
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As part of my Virtual Book Club, I'm thrilled to announce the Moby-Dick Seminar and Middlemarch Seminar, new offerings on two of the greatest writers in 19th-C. literature! Don't miss out on this chance to explore the riches of their literary worlds in immersive and intensive seminars that will bring you inside the prose that has made their work "essential reading" for millions of readers worldwide. Click below to learn more...
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First edition of Middlemarch
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Illustration from Moby-Dick
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The Virtual Book Club has an exciting month ahead: we will be reading the 2021 Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah's acclaimed masterpiece Gravel Heart. You can learn more about the book here – and for more about our international community of passionate readers, click below...
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In response to your requests, I've created a new forum for us to discuss cinematic masterpieces...
Please join me for our next meeting of the Virtual Film Club, on the breathtaking La Strada by the legendary director Federico Fellini on Monday, January 23rd, 5pm Eastern Time. Together, we will explore how this film – one of the most influential in the history of Italian cinema – helped pave the way for a new style of filmmaking in Italy and beyond.
La Strada is available for streaming on HBOMax. Here is the trailer.
Join me for a film you'll never forget,
Joseph
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I hope you can join me for these upcoming events on my Botticelli's Secret, stay tuned for more – and please click here if you or your organization would like to organzine an event, thank you!
•01.18, Nantucket Atheneum, Nantucket, MA, details tba
• 01.24, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, MA, details tba
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Fanny and Alexander by Ingmar Bergman
I try to watch this extraordinary film – a stunning family epic by one of the Europe's most acclaimed auteur directors – each holiday season. Read Roger Ebert's review of what he calls this "astonishingly beautiful" film here.
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Mystic Nativity by Sandro Botticelli
This late work from Botticelli's career reveals the increasingly religious and apocalyptic atmosphere that permeates his canvases in the epoch of Girolamo Savonarola, the so-called "Mad Monk" who urged Florentines to cast aside their worldly pleasures – and who led the public burning of art in his infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities." Read more on Savonarola in this piece by the acclaimed Renaissance historian Anthony Grafton.
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"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats
Here are the memorable final lines of this celebrated meditation on the timelessness of art versus the time-bound realm of our human world, among other things:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
I could say more, but better, read here for yourself, to see why after two hundred years this poem still sings for readers with the same breathtaking musicality as when it first appeared in 1819.
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Thanks to your generous interest, my Facebook "author" page has nearly 7,000 followers. I welcome you to join our community, and if you already have, grazie mille for your ongoing support.
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I would love to hear from you & share ideas: |
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