Customer Reviews (3)

Fantastic
This book is worth the money if only for the reproductions.Lots of large plates with a lot of close ups as well. If you only want one book on Botticelli this would be a good one.

A beautiful book!
This is fascinating book about the life of Botticelli and techniques he used.The reproductions are wonderful, including some close-ups of characters from selected paintings. I recently returned from Italy, and having viewed many of these paintings at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence makes the reading and the beautiful color plates throughout the book all the more enjoyable.I would highly recommend this book to fans of Renaissance art.

Another life for Botticelli
In the life of Sandro Botticelli, Lightbown does not remark the big season of secret science that linked several artists in and around Florence.
This science that today we can call "esoterism" come from the recent middle age and increased in Florence his importance.
The Great Lorenzo dei Medici was one of the most important men of this matter. ... Read more

Book Description
Forgotten immediately after his death, Sandro Botticelli (1444 - 45-1510) was rediscovered in the 19th century by the pre-Raphaelites and now ranks among the greatest Renaissance artists. This Spanish-language book pays tribute to his captivating figures of women, his intimate portrayals of the Madonna and Child, and the angelic beauty of his adolescents — famous the world over today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent introductory guide to a Western totem.
Three elements distinguish Barbara Deimling's outstanding introductory study of Botticelli, one of the High Kings of Western culture:

1.Her account of the artist's work, with detailed analyses of Botticelli's densely allegorical paintings (not just in his world-renowned mythological scenes 'Primavera' and 'Birth of Venus', but his more numerous religious works also); the influence on him of literature, from classical poetry to the Bible and theology to Dante (some of the famous sketches for whose 'Divine Comedy' are included here); and the development of his celebrated style, from the sumptouosness of his mid-period, with its graceful, idealised human figures and concern with architectural perspective, to the austere late works, marking a rejection of Renaissance 'realism', and a return to the stylisation and exagerration of the Gothic period, and a new emotional charge, particularly in some harrowing crucifixion and lamentation scenes.

2.The use of Botticelli as a model for the teaching of art history.Deimling is not content to treat Botticelli as a lone genius who transcended his time, and concentrating solely on his pictures' form and content.By placing Botticelli firmly in the historical realities of 15th century Florence (its economic worldliness giving onto religious hysteria and acopalyptic moods near its end), Deimling shows that every one of his paintings bears the imprint, not only of the period's aesthetic innovations, but of the patrons whocommissioned him.Aesthetic choices - such as the use of gold-leaf paint - is decided not by inner imperative, but the desire of a patron to show off his wealth and status, or a merchants' guild to advertise their wares.Colours, motifs, even figures in the paintings, represent the important figures of the day, and the symbolism of their professions and families.The surprise is not that Botticelli was a unique genius, but that he managed to create works inspiring spiritual awe in such a mundane, compromised context.

3. The usual high Taschen quality of plates, admirably reproducing Botticelli's colours, especially the glowing reds that streak his work.Many Botticelli paintings are too big and long to be adequately reproduced, but there is an intelligent use of details to give the reader some idea of his art.If I have one complaint, it is the downplaying of Botticelli's humour and eroticism, but what do you want in 96 pages? ... Read more

Amazon.com
The Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli is probably best known for Birth of Venus and Primavera, two commissions for the young Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. The same delicate, rhythmic line and fanciful imagination can be found in another project for this patron: an unfinished set of drawings from the 1480s that illustrate The Divine Comedy, Dante's chronicle of his vividly imagined travels through the Inferno and Purgatory to Paradise.

For those familiar with the jewel-like colors of Botticelli's paintings, it may come as a shock that many of the 92 drawings that survive are very faint preliminary sketches. (They were made with a metal point on sheep parchment, sometimes touched up with pen and ink. A few have been colored in.) But just as the poet Virgil serves as the 35-year-old epic hero's indispensable guide, the astute running commentary in this book helps modern readers perceive how Botticelli subtly evokes the hero's feelings. "Botticelli's Dante is guided above all by his eyes," writes Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg, chief curator of Berlin's Kupferstichkabinett. "[They] are literally opened in proportion to his enlightenment, until his vision ultimately dissolves in an image of pure beauty, liberated from constraints of time and space."

By showing multiple views of the characters in a single drawing, Botticelli portrays Dante's successive reactions to what he sees and Virgil's responses to his charge's state of mind. And by giving every group of doomed souls a distinctive gesture or expression, he follows the poet's lead in illuminating both the individual and the universal. Published to accompany the exhibition of the same title that has been shown in Berlin and Rome and continues at the Royal Academy of Arts in London through June 2001, this book represents a triumph of accessible scholarship, intelligent design, and deeply rewarding content. --Cathy Curtis Book Description
A Royal Academy of Arts Publication

In the 1480s, the great Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli was commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici to make a series of drawings to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy. Botticelli gave stunning visual form to the poet's epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, but the project was never completed and the sheets were scattered.

Now, more than 500 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 Botticelli's canto sheets in superb color, faced by a commentary on Botticelli's pictorial response to Dante's 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.

Advertising: Art magazines, New York Times Book Review

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.

270 illustrations in full color, 113/4 x 95/8" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

an incredible marriage of two arts
i heard of this drawings thru a brief documentary on Dante's Divine Comedy,and managed to track down a bookabout this subject, finallyconsulted Amazon to get it .Frankly when i saw the relatively modestprice tag ,i did not imagine that in fact the book is not only a first class Art book worth( in an ideal world a bit less insane that the present one)much more than some 40 euros ,with a magisteriallycommentedanalysis ,and a magnificent one at that,for each of these trascendental drawings.Moreover the riproduction of the drawings is excellent,and the close examination of each of them with a magnifying lenscan onlyleave a passionate of both Dante and of Great Painting simply speechless.Congratulations to authors,editorsand everybody who made this available, from a humble old lover of Dante,of Painting and Music, thosethings that can stiil distinguish us from the "bestie', the "bruti" ,sincerely,guido zargani

SANDRO BOTTICELLI : THE DRAWINGS FOR DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY
SANDRO BOTTICELLI'S DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY IS NO MORE BETTER.
MERCI FOR THE AUTEUR-EDITION .

A Beauty of a Book
This book brought Dante to life in a way for which I was unprepared. From the moment I saw Boticelli's depictions of the damned I was sure he must have had an "inside" look into what Dnate was writing about. A wonderful coffee-table book that will get your guests to talking.

Sandro Botticelli: The Picture Cycle for Dante's Divine Come
As a former museum photographer, I can speak to the fine reproductions in this volume. The complexity of reproducing drawings of such fine detail in print is quite difficult if not impossible. One would expect to find this quality at a much greater price. This volume is not only a master work of techical ability, but the history revealed in the essays is astounding. I actually could not put it down. As a painter working with the subject matter, it provided an invaluable resource.

Divine Botticelli
This is an extraordinary book.It's like finding a rare and beautiful volume in an antiquarian bookstore.The book consists of almost a hundred drawings by Botticelli, made around 1500 to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy of 1300.

The drawings are marvelous. The devils and monsters are rather tame by modern standards but the thousands of individual characters are beautifully drawn and are easily recognizable as Botticelli's work even to the untrained eye.Botticelli illustrates each canto like a modern day story board or sequence of drawings in a cartoon strip.The action follows all of the events described in each canto. I pored over the drawings every evening for a month.I used a recent translation of the Inferno as my guide to this section. Opposite each drawing is a short but comprehensive summary of the canto together with a description of the drawing. The summary was sufficient to carry me through the Purgatorio and Paradiso sections and the descriptions were extremely helpful and never pedantic.

The book is superbly produced with informative essays and excellent photographs of paintings by Botticelli to illustrate his style.Even the dust cover is well-made and robust.It is illustrated with a scene of Dante and Virgil crossing a bridge over a pit of burning souls (the evil counselors). The hard cover of the book is embossed with the flames from the same scene, making it a very attractive volume.

Most of the drawings, which were intended to be colored, are unfinished, but this adds to the interest since it's possible to see how the artist worked.In some, the drawings are so dense and complex that you might need a magnifying glass to see them.On each such occasion the producers of the book have provided an enlargement of the drawing on the following page, anticipating the reader's needs.A particularly fine example of the complex drawing is the illustration for canto X of the Purgatorio.The scene shows marble reliefs on the walls of the mountain terrace illustrating example of humility.There are three tableaux of such detail and intensity that each could represent a sketch for a fresco on the wall of a cathedral and yet the complete drawing is on a piece of sheepskin parchment measuring about 14 x 16 inches. ... Read more

Book Description
1898. Hewlett, English novelist, poet and essayist best known for his historical romances and travel books, writes a fictionalized account of Sandro Botticelli. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

little jewels
These stickers are small, pretty reproductions of various pieces of artwork. Each sticker is unique in the book, no doubles of any picture. They aren't the most perfect color plates ever, but they're basically for correspondance and craft purposes, or could be used as a reference (say, by Art History students). While I wish there had been duplicates, I can't fault Dover for erring on the side of variety, and I can't argue with the wonderful value the price represents. This little book is great as stationery, but it would also make a nice stocking-stuffer or gift topper. If Botticelli isn't your favorite artist, Dover has made books of other artists' work, which Amazon also offers and which are just as nifty.

The First Sense
BOTTICELLI's art tells what he liked in other artists:the shaded color and light of Andrea del Verrocchio, the energy of Antonio del Pollaiolo, and the faces of Fra Filippo Lippi. From Bruno Santi's book, it becomes clear what he liked in his own work:atmosphere, in the coarse tent with the headless Assyrian King Holofernes and in the dawn alive with Judith and her lady-in-waiting; attention to detail, in the blue enamel armor and metal highlights of his Fortitude; color, in the dawn flesh tones under the cornflower- and daisy-decorated clothing on his Birth of Venus; innovation, in the clear path to the larger-than-life 16th-century art with his Calumny, in the first early Renaissance freely placed figures with his Primavera and in the first Italian inscription in a painting with his Madonna enthroned with saints; meditation, in the golden dusk of his Adoration of the Magi; tension, in the contorted acolytes at his Communion of St. Jerome. The author also shows in his Scala/Riverside published work what the Florentine art world was doing during David Landau and Peter Parshall's THE RENAISSANCE PRINT 1470-1500. Likewise, his beautifully illustrated text is a good way to understand Jill Dunkerton's DURER TO VERONESE, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Maria Kusche's SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, Mary D. Garrard's ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, Andreas Prater and Hermann Bauer's PAINTING OF THE BAROQUE, and Rudolf Wittkower's ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY 1600-1750. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

interesting book
It is one of the nicest surprises in terms of Botticelli scholarship. The author (an illustrious Leonardo scholar) is trying to interpret a number of paintings on which there is already quite a lot of bibliography, and does a pretty good job. My only complaint is the fact that sometimes I wish he would deepen and extend his very interesting comments (the book has 128 pages and 72 illustrations, usually taking up the space of a page, so there is not a whole lot of text, and the fonts are pretty big). So, if you are looking for interesting theories concerning Botticelli's mythological paintings, than this is one of the books for you. If you're looking for books with nice pictures, there are better ones available (this one is smallish, and because of the format, although has nice details, the main pictures do not generally fit on a single page).

illuminating and engaging
After reading this book I went to the Uffizi and saw Botticelli in a new light. His writing leads you through the paintings as if you are unravelling a mystery, giving you insight that a modern viewer would otherwise never have. The book is both wonderfully concise and substantial, with details, illustrations, references to the cultural of some of the most beautiful and well-known paintings in the world.

Good book on Botticelli
This is a good book to start with to learn about Botticelli. It says it has 57 color images (72 total), but many are details of the same works, or related works by other artists. 6 most famous paintings are focused on. The text is pretty interesting, including some art history and explanations ofthose works. But the small size of the book (about 10 inches high), doesn'tallow detailed reproductions. Basically, this is a great book to own if youwould rather not pay (the money) for a more complete book, or if youprefer lighter reading. I found "Botticelli: Images of Love andSpring" a pleasant surprise. ... Read more