Ruth Leon recommends… Botticelli in 10 minutes
Ruth Leon recommendsArt history in 10 minutes
One of my favourite ways to spend ten minutes is with The National Gallery’s 10-minute talks. This one does what it says on the tin, sorry, title. Laura Llewellyn, the National Gallery’s Associate Curator of Renaissance Paintings, introduces us to Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli and explains what is was that made him a favourite of the Medici Family and one of the best established painters in Florence.
She tells us that, although we tend to think of him as a painter of religious and mythical scenes, he was one of the first to ally his technical painterly skills with emotional content in his many and varied portraits. She points out that many of his portraits are posed head-on, facing the viewer, which emphasises their immediacy and intimacy, rare at the beginning of the 16th century where portraits were usually in profile.
For a musical connection, Ottorino Respighi’s Trittico Botticelliano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFG5ggLIBys
I think Botticelli deserves more than 10 minutes.