Beginning February 14, the Fenway’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, already host to many Renaissance masterpieces, becomes the country’s go-to location for the works of Renaissance icon Sandro Botticelli when the exhibit Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes makes its debut. Reuniting the Gardner Museum’s own The Story of Lucretia (pictured) with more than a half dozen other paintings by the revered artist—including The Story of Virginia, on loan from Italy to a U.S. museum for the first time—the show focuses on Botticelli’s innovative narrative works depicting legendary scenes that were crafted for the homes of Florence’s elite. Just as Botticelli put his own spin on these classical and early Christian-era tales to reflect his own tumultuous times, New Yorker cartoonist Karl Stevens comments on Botticelli’s creations from a modern perspective through his own work that was specifically commissioned by the Gardner for this display.
