Tour de Force --- Day 12/315

Walk: Legion of Honor (Botticelli Drawings)

Distance: 3.8 miles

Thank you dear readers for making CIWT popular enough that the San Francisco's Fine Arts Museums qualified Ciwt to attend Press Previews of their important shows.  This is Ciwt's favorite art perk, and the exhibition that she got to preview today is truly the most impressive she has seen in all her years attending previews and other exhibitions.

Curator, Furio Rinaldi

Impressive for many reasons.  For the remarkable connoisseurship by Furio Rinaldi who conceived of the exhibition and spent more than three years researching, culling the drawings actually done by the renaissance artist Botticelli from the many strewn around his workshop, contacting and securing the sixty works in the exhibition from such eminent institutions as the Uffizi Gallery, the British Museum, the Louvre and 39 private collectors around the world. (It is difficult to imagine the initial resistance he likely encountered as most owners of important art are loath to let them travel).  Impressive for the clean, modern, spare design of the exhibition which both honors the works and lets their exquisite details stand out.  Impressive for the fresh scholarship and view of such a thoroughly familiar and beloved artist.

Impressive also because it turned out Botticelli Drawings includes not just preliminary drawings but,  many cases, the actual paintings they were made for.  

Ciwt felt fortunate to have spent a few preview hours in Renaissance Florence, and she could sense the large gathering of her fellow 'press' members felt the same.  If you are able to come to the Legion of Honor between now and February 11, 2024, you can do the same.