The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum celebrates Sandro Botticelli with the exhibition: “Botticelli: Heroines + Heroes”. There are eight works by the Renaissance Master along with two masterpieces “The story of Lucrezia” (part of the permanent collection of the Museum) and “The story of Virginia”, a loan from Italy. The works of Botticelli will have alongside, in a sort of ideal dialogue, the drawings of Karl Stevens, a cartoonist of the New Yorker, who reinterprets the Botticelli’s masterpieces with a gaze at the role of women in contemporary society.
“To have Lucrezia and Virginia reunited within the halls of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a historic event” stated Doctor Nathaniel Silver, curator of the collection. The exhibition praises the amazing narrative ability of these works and the timeless revolutionary spirit of the genius of Botticelli which allowed such an ideal dialogue with a contemporary artist in a contemporary environment.
“The Botticelli exhibition is part of a mosaic of events that confirms the great influence of Italian art and culture on relations between Italy and the USA and on the relations between our people. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the city of Boston, which boasts a historic connection to Italy, are now at the center of a lively relation that is renewed and strengthened on a daily basis" said Armando Varricchio, Ambassador of Italy to the United States.
