Botticelli: Beauty, Faith & the Renaissance
Tuesday, November 10th, 2026
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Explore the life and artistic legacy of Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), one of the defining painters of the Early Renaissance who very early developed specific style of depicting religious and secular themes.
With soft colors and graceful lines deeply religious Botticelli depicted Virgin Mary as the ethereal and sublime figure in dozens of paintings. Inspired by classical myths, like many Renaissance artists, he created some of the best known paintings in the world: The Birth of Venus and La Primavera. With sensual, seminude, elongated figures of mythological goddesses Botticelli created a new, idealized image of female beauty that reflects the Renaissance fascination with beauty, spirituality, and classical mythology.
This cultural program will explore his connection to the powerful artistic and intellectual circles of Florence, and the changing cultural climate that dramatically transformed his work later in life under the influence of Girolamo Savonarola.
About the Speaker: Snjezana Smodlaka, born in Croatia, holds a B.A. in Italian Literature and M.A. in Romance Philology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia; also M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian Literature from the Rutgers University. She worked as an Italian and Latin teacher in high school and as an adjunct professor at Wagner College, CSI, and The Rutgers University. She has published numerous articles on Italian language and literature and presented more than forty papers on international congresses in the United States, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Austria. For the last two decades, she broadened her research on aesthetics and intersections between Italian literature, figurative arts, and opera. She is particularly committed to bringing back Italian Renaissance and Baroque women artists from centuries-old oblivion.
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