Book Clubs and Botticelli

I'm going out to my book club today and I'll probably be too tired to write about how that went after I get back. So I thought I'd mention that I was watching a documentary on the Medicis the other night and it talked about how Botticelli did some of his most famous work, The Birth of Venus and the Primavera under their patronage. But after the death of Lorenzo de Medici he went fanatically Christian under the new regime and burned many of the mythologically themed paintings in his possession. I find it heart-breaking to think we've lost such fine art without even knowing what we've lost. I hold out a hopeful fantasy that Boticelli, in order to seem like he was going along with the new regime, pretended to burn some of his paintings but really kept all of them hidden away and perhaps someday we'll find them. But, yes, I know how unlikely that is.

In any event, at least we still have what was kept safe by the Medicis.