On The Trail of A Great Master

Having experienced the thrill of analyzing the work of a great artist of the Florentine Renaissance during my research for Raphael, I ventured a bit further by trying to do the same for Botticelli. His work was overwhelming in numbers and although my initial inclination was to abandon the idea, I stayed with it, did a tremendous amount of research and still came to the conclusion that this was too much to accomplish. I tried to narrow the scope to just the work in the Uffizi, but that great museum had a tremendous number of Botticelli paintings. Then it struck me. Although most people who visit the Botticelli Rooms in the Uffizi gawk over the Birth of Venus and Primavera and rightly so, I have always been taken by the painting just to the right of Primavera, the Adoration of the Magi. In addition to its being a beautiful work, the historical significance of containing in it some of the great Florentines of the 15th century was overwhelming. After all no fewer than six Medicis were depicted, plus the donor, the humanists who created the Medici Academy, and none other than Botticelli himself. The latter being the only self portrait he did, and indeed the only existing "realistic" likeness of the great master himself. I therefore decided to first talk about the difficulty in creating a show around this theme, summarize the prodigious number of paintings that existed throughout the world, focus on my inability to visit a museum without finding a Botticelli quite by accident, give a biographical sketch of Botticelli, analyze a few of his work, and then finally to do an in-depth analysis of the Adoration and my own "theories" of who's who in this great work. What at first seemed impossible began to flow quickly once the plan was set in my mind.

The editing process held no great moments as I have become adept at correcting mistakes by cutting and pasting fresh voice-overs. Other than that nothing special occurred. My friend Ric suggested a desire to do a show soon about an obscure Ancient Roman site in Central Tuscany named Carsulae, which we will do soon. The advent of a ferocious snow storm with two feet of snow keeping everyone indoors helped to give me the time to get the show accomplished quickly. My next show will focus on the "perfect" tour of Venice, LOL, and that's that.