The restless genius of Sandro Botticelli is explored in depth in the most important Botticelli exhibition ever seen in the United States, “Botticelli and the Search for the Divine”.
Running February 11 to April 5 at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Virginia, this is a major international loan exhibition organized in partnership with Italy’s Associazione Culturale Metamorfosi. Every phase of the artist’s tumultuous career is represented in this selection, as well as nine works by his master Filippo Lippi, Masaccio’s only pupil. Botticelli was guided to success by the Medici dynasty, the patrons for sacred altarpieces and sensuous paintings of classical mythology, including several in this unprecedented exhibition. After the fall of the Medici, many of his paintings were lost in the bonfires of the vanities.
In the fourth such partnership, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (April 15–July 9) as its only other venue and will include one of two Botticelli’s paintings of an isolated Venus, on view for the first time in the United States.
Director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art Aaron De Groft commented, “We are extremely proud to be able to bring to this country a groundbreaking exhibition of one of the world’s greatest artists. The Botticelli show continues a tradition of internationally important exhibitions, following Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Leonardo da Vinci in recent years, in which exhibitions of great original works of art provide the lens for us to explore the themes and ideas that inspired their genius.”
For more information, visit the Muscarelle or Museum of Fine Arts websites.