Show gives glimpse of how Botticelli inspired many

The show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Botticelli Re-imagined, opened in London on Saturday, displaying some of the works that artists inspired by early Renaissance Italian painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) have produced in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Together with paintings by Botticelli himself, these disparate works throw light on the Renaissance artist's talent and the inspiration others have drawn from his work, sight of which can too easily be lost in the global ubiquity of reproductions of his pieces.

"The poet T.S. Eliot pointed out that whenever a new work of art is created, it impacts on how we perceive all previous works of art, and it is for that reason that we start with contemporary art and then back to the 19th century and Botticelli's rediscovery and finally Botticelli's own work," Mark Evans, head of painting at the V&A, says.