A fresh perspective on an iconic artist and his time.
Tracing the fate of remarkable 15th-century drawings.
In 1475, the artist Sandro Botticelli (circa 1445-1510) was at the height of his prominence, proclaimed “Master of Painting, one of Florence’s highest artistic honors.” Soon, he undertook two important projects: to illustrate each of the 100 cantos in Dante’s Divine Comedy, one set for a deluxe edition intended for mass production and another, commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici—Botticelli’s most influential patron and a cousin of Lorenzo il Magnifico— for a private, hand-lettered volume. Luzzi, a professor of comparative literature, 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: drawings that informed an understanding of the fertile, contradictory period that came to be known as the Renaissance. The Dante drawings went unfinished for more than a decade while Botticelli worked on other projects, including three frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and The Birth of Venus. In 1494, however, Lorenzo apparently rushed the artist to fulfill the commission, probably to offer the volume as a gift to the French king, Charles VIII, who had just marched into Florence and with whom Lorenzo hoped to ingratiate himself. Luzzi recounts the sad trajectory of Botticelli’s last years and his diminished posthumous reputation until a renewed interest in Dante in the late 18th century and a celebration of the Renaissance by pre-Raphaelites and prominent art critics in the 19th century led to “the Victorian cult of Botticelli.” After migrating through Europe, the drawings, not seen for some 400 years, ended up in England, where they were bought by an astute German art historian. Precariously surviving World War II in a salt mine and divided during the Cold War, in 2000, “all 92 extant Dante illustrations by Botticelli appear[ed] together for the first time at exhibitions in Rome, Berlin, and London.” The book includes photos, a timeline, and a list of “key terms.”
A fresh perspective on an iconic artist and his time.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00401-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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