Product Description

Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father brings a young painter back with him from Holland to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities and opportunities to paint to the glory of God. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with all sorts of taboo areas of life. On excursions into the streets of night-time Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself. Alessandra must make crucial decisions about the shape of her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola. And through it all, there is the painter, whose love will change everything.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12133 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Birth of Venus is all the more fascinating a historical novel for the author's inability to make up her mind what it is about. Is it a novel about the limited choices available to a woman with talent in Renaissance Florence--marriage or the convent? Or is it a novel about the choices you make to survive in a totalitarian society? As Savonarola takes Florence closer and closer to being an ascetic theocracy, Alessandra, her gay brother and his lover whom she has married for mutual protection find themselves in more and more peril. It could also be a detective story--Allesandra is in love with a painter whose religious mania and fascination with the body makes him a plausible suspect for a series of killings and dismemberments. Some historical novels wear their research too heavily--Dunant's is light, fluent and pacy, but her fascination with the possibilities revealed by research leaves her failing to make choices.

The Birth of Venus is a highly intelligent novel kept from incoherence mostly by the intensely imagined Alessandra, through whose eyes we see the tragic end of a key moment in human culture and whose lively sensibility constantly sparks ideas about art and her time. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'No one should visit Tuscany this summer without this book. It is richly textured, and driven by a thrillerish fever' TIMES ' Dunant makes the art and philosophy of the period look new and dangerous again' IND ON SUN 'A beautiful serpent of a book, seductive dangerous and full of wise guile. Dunant's snaky tale of art, sex and Florentine hysteria, consumes utterly - but the experience is all pleasure.' Simon Schama

British author Dunant (Mapping the Edge, 2001, etc.) weaves everyone's favorite art history moments into a vivid tapestry of life on the Arno during the upheaval of the Renaissance. The postmortem ablutions of Sister Lucrezia reveal surprises. The breast cancer that was thought to have killed her was neither cancerous nor mammary, and her aged monastic corpse was lavishly decorated with a most vivid and decidedly impious serpent. How such things came to be are revealed in a retracing of the late nun's youth, flowering, and de-flowering following the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Fourth and favorite child of a prosperous silk manufacturer and his highly cultured wife, Alessandra Cecchi is far less conventionally attractive than her sister, but she's got her mother's brains and a powerful craving to make art. So, cursed with excessive wit and artistry, this young Florentine is highly vulnerable to the surly attractions of the painter her upwardly mobile father has brought home from the gray reaches of northern Europe to do up the family chapel. The nameless decorator, however, seems impervious to her gawky charms, and the possibility of a relationship is nipped in the bud by the sudden need of a much older family acquaintance to find a wife and get an heir. Alas, on her wedding night Alessandra learns in the most humiliating way how it came to be that her flamboyant brother Tomaso was such good friends with her new husband Cristoforo and how there will be none of the carnal pleasures of the garden-variety marriage. The charming and cultured Cristoforo has formed this unholy alliance to stay out of the clutches of Girolamo Savonarola's religious storm troopers. To the chagrin of all, the grisly wedding coupling fails to produce a child. Then, as the Dominican Taliban starts to squeeze the life from the Florentine Republic, Alessandra finds her way back to the family chapel and the very needy young genius. No real surprises in the romance department, but the depiction of Florence as Tehran under the Ayatollah is an eye-opener. (Kirkus Reviews)

TIMES
'No one should visit Tuscany this summer without this book. It is richly textured, and driven by a thrillerish fever'

Customer Reviews

a pleasant surprise
I picked this up in a charity shop, I'd never heard of it but the blurb appealed. It sat in my 'to read' pile for a few months before I picked it up.
As soon as I started it I was hooked. I found it fairly easy to read and it was a great story. Gripping, exciting with an interesting historical background and I found the central character appealing and easy to engage with.
I would definitely recommend this book.

A wonderful read
I read a synopsis for The Birth of Venus in a daily newspaper book club review and, having visited Florence, was interested to pursue this novel. It is a wonderful read and Alessandra has become quite a heroine for me. My book has since done the rounds of quite a few friends and it has been thoroughly enjoyed by all. Quite simply, a must read!

Really engrossing, magical book
A brilliantly crafted novel. Kept me in suspense until the end. Whetted my apetite for Renaissance art while keeping me intrigued by a juicy plot. The main character, Alessandra, was so easy to fall in love with and I could hardly bear to put it down. Definitely 10 out of 10 - 15th Century Florence just leapt off the page!