![]() ![]() She determines to make a life in art, even as she spends enjoyable times with Cristoforo at an intellectual level. She quite likes Cristoforo because he has a lively mind and he’s interested in art, but their union is blighted by her discovery of Tomaso as her rival. She has agreed to this marriage only to escape being sent to a convent, the only safe place for unmarried girls when the French army threaten to invade after negotiations break down. Her parents marry Alessandra off to Cristoforo Longello, an older man in his forties, who turns out not only to be gay but also to be having a long term passion for Alessandra’s brother Tomaso. Alessandra is a young girl aspiring to be an artist at a time when marriage was her only option and a painter was only an artisan and of no social standing whatsoever. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant is historical fiction set in Florence in the 15th century when Lorenzo di Medici had died and Savonarola had driven out his dull brother Piero in order to impose fundamentalist religion and the ‘burning of the vanities’. This updated review is an edited version of what I wrote in my journal back on July 17th, 2007. Update 30/3/17 Please note: the gremlins got to an earlier version of this review – I think I had somehow restored the wrong version. ![]()
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