A Royal Academy of Arts Publication In the 148s, the great Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici to make a series of drawings to illustrate Dantes Divine Comedy. Botticelli gave stunning visual form to the poets epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, but the project was never completed and the sheets were scattered.
Now, more than 5 years after their creation, all 91 existing-and very fragile-vellum sheets will be shown together for the first time, in Berlin, Rome, and London. This book, which accompanies the exhibition, illustrates each of Botticellis canto sheets in superb color, faced by a commentary on Botticellis pictorial response to Dantes poem by Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, where 84 of the sheets are permanently housed. Eight essays on Botticelli, the Medici, and the Divine Comedy complete this unprecedented volume.
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HEIN-THOMAS SCHULZE ALTCAPPENBERG is chief curator at the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.
PETER KELLER and JULIA SCHEWSKI are curators at the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. HORST BREDEKAMP teaches at the Institut fr Kunstgeschichte, Humboldt-Universitt, Berlin. DAMIAN DOMBROWSKI teaches at the Institut fr Kunstgeschichte der Universitt, Wrzburg. ANDREAS KABLITZ is a professor at the Universitt, Kln. GIOVANNI MORELLO is a curator at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome. ROBERT FUCHS and DORIS OLTROGGE teach at the Fachhochschule, Kln.
27 illustrations in full color, 113/4 x 95/8
