The Secrets of Botticelli’s Drawings

Bringing a new perspective on the beloved Renaissance artist, “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” reveals the central role that drawing played in Sandro Botticelli’s art and practice. This short documentary takes viewers through the streets of Florence, where the artist lived and worked, to the Uffizi galleries, home of Botticelli’s most striking masterpieces. The story […]

The Hidden Meanings in a 16th-Century Female Nude

How a rarely-seen drawing of the Three Graces by Raphael reveals the era’s ideas about nudity, modesty, shame – and the artist’s genius. It’s part of an exhibition, Drawing the Italian Renaissance – at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace – of drawings from 1450 to 1600, the biggest of its kind ever shown in the […]

Pietro Perugino master of Raphael

Pietro Perugino, born Pietro Vannucci, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, who developed some of the qualities that found classic expression in the High Renaissance. Raphael was his most famous pupil. He was born Pietro Vannucci in Città della Pieve, Umbria, the son of Cristoforo Maria Vannucci. His nickname characterizes him as […]

Raphael and His Main Works

Por centuries Raphael has been recognised as the supreme High Renaissance painter, more versatile than Michelangelo and more prolific than their older contemporary Leonardo. Though he died at 37, Raphael’s example as a paragon of classicism dominated the academic tradition of European painting until the mid-19th century. Raphael (Raffaello Santi) was born in Urbino where […]

Introduction to ‘Michelangelo: The Last Decades’

By Sarah Vowles In 1534, Michelangelo Buonarroti was 59 years old and already the most celebrated artist in Europe. He had mastered the fields of sculpture, painting and architecture, and was a gifted amateur poet. Now, as he moved from his native Florence back to Rome – where Pope Clement VII had commissioned him to […]

The Secrets of Botticelli’s Drawings

Bringing a new perspective on the beloved Renaissance artist, “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” reveals the central role that drawing played in Sandro Botticelli’s art and practice. This short documentary takes viewers through the streets of Florence, where the artist lived and worked, to the Uffizi galleries, home of Botticelli’s most striking masterpieces. The story […]

The Renaissance, History of ideas (Video)

The Renaissance is a historical period with several lessons to teach us about how to improve our world today. Its study should not only be for its importance, but for its relevance to our future.

Sandro Botticelli, Representative of the Golden Age of the Early Italian Renaissance

Sandro Botticelli, (1445-1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance. Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a “golden age”, a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous […]

Piero di Cosimo, Florentine Painter of Classical Mythology

Piero di Cosimo (2 January 1462 – 1521), also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was an Italian Renaissance painter. The son of a goldsmith, Piero was born in Florence and apprenticed under the artist Cosimo Rosseli, from whom he derived his popular name and whom he assisted in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in […]