A bizarre story of a ghost who repeatedly kills the ghost of the woman who spurned his love, and how it leads to a successful marriage. Illustrated by Botticelli.
Botticelli
Written by Giovanni Boccaccio by 1352 and revised in 1370-71, it consists of a hundred stories told by 7 women and 3 men who fled Florence during the Black Death. Some of those tales have been extensively painted.
How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
Half a millennium later, a British artist paints the interior of Botticelli’s studio, with members of the de’ Medici family. How accurate could that be?
The yolk of fresh hens’ eggs used as a binder for fine and thin brushstrokes, from about 1250-1500, and revived in 19th and 20th centuries.
Descending past the Minotaur of Crete, they reach a group of centaurs and travel on past famous killers, into a wood of thorn trees of those who committed suicide.
Love is blind, so is Cupid, as well as the personification of Fortune. Also applied to those about to be executed, and to celebrate our sense of sight in a widespread game of blind man’s buff.
He taught, and travelled more. Paintings include ‘Death, the Reaper’ and one of the last of his major oil paintings, ‘A Masque for the Four Seasons’ with its references to Botticelli’s Primavera.
Now known as one of the leading illustrators of children’s books, he was also an accomplished and recognised painter. Here are some narratives from his early career.
Dante and Virgil enter the first circle of Hell, Limbo, where those who never sinned but weren’t baptised in the Christian faith are confined.
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