Ana Debenedetti

To mark the 500th anniversary of Raphael's death, in 2020 the V&A presents a landmark project to enhance the Raphael Court, home to one of the greatest treasures of the Renaissance, the Raphael Cartoons. These tapestry designs, commissioned in 1515 for the Sistine Chapel, have been rephotographed in incredible detail - shown here for the first time. This beautiful and compelling book sheds fresh light on Raphael's artistic practice and the organization of his large workshop. It considers the Cartoons' provenance, from their sudden reappearance in England in 1623, up to their loan to the South Kensington Museum in 1865.

The Raphael Court

Caroline Elam

Botticelli Past and Present

A revealing look at the commercial strategy and diverse output of this canonical Renaissance artist. In this vivid account, Ana Debenedetti reexamines the life and work of Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli through a novel lens: his business acumen. Focusing on the organization of Botticelli’s workshop and the commercial strategies he devised to make his way in Florence’s very competitive art market, Debenedetti looks with fresh eyes at the remarkable career and output of this pivotal artist within the wider context of Florentine society and culture. Uniquely, Debenedetti evaluates Botticelli’s celebrated works, like The Birth of Venus, alongside less familiar forms such as tapestry and embroidery, showing the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre and his talent as a designer across media.

Artist and Designer

Botticelli

The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short introduction which positions them within the wider scholarly literature on Botticelli. The parts are organised chronologically beginning with discussion of the artist and his working practice in his own time, moving onto the progressive rediscovery of his work from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, through to his enduring impact on contemporary art and design. Expertly written by researchers and eminent art historians and richly illustrated throughout, the broad range of essays in this book make a valuable contribution to Botticelli studies.

Ana Debenedetti

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