#92 – Sandro Botticelli 4

Botticelli’s first painting of a non-religious subject was Fortitude, 1470. It’s considered his first masterpiece. He then explored other stories like The Return of Judith to Bethulia from the Old Testament and St Sebastian, an early Christian saint and martyr, his first truly SEXY painting. He then turned to the stories from Greco-Roman antiquity and the poetry of his friend Poliziano for inspiration, leading his way to painting his own version of Apelles’ ‘Aphrodite Anadyomene‘, The Birth Of Venus.    

Om Podcasten

Starting in Florence in the 14th century, a new era began to emerge in the West. People like Petrarch, who re-discovered Cicero’s lost letters, and the new humanists - who valued the study of classical antiquity - ushered in a rebirth, or as we know it today, a “renaissance" - in the study of the arts, the sciences, philosophy, and the theatre. They rediscovered what it meant to be human.