ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK IS BUILT ON A SCAFFOLD OF HISTORY CONSTRUCTED from a number of contemporary sources, eminent scholars, and art historians. The facts are theirs; any mistakes are entirely my own.
I could not have written it without the love, intellectual encouragement, and support of Sue Woodman, who has given me more than she will ever know (though I daresay she suspects). Berenice Goodwin, a great art teacher and a good friend, read the manuscript at an early critical stage and was inspirational, both in saving me from my worst mistakes and substantially enriching my understanding of the period. My deep thanks go to Jaki Authur, Gillian Slovo, Eileen Quinn, Peter Busby, and Mohit Bakaya, each of whom in their unique way fed my spirit during difficult times. For their assistance in Florence, thanks to Isabella Planner, Carla Corri, and Pietro Bernabei. Also, thanks to Kate Lowe, who helped me firsthand with her scholarship. And finally to my agent, Clare Alexander, who had infinite patience and clarity of criticism, and to Lennie Goodings, my longtime editor and friend, who was the best midwife one could have on a book which, in keeping with its title, had a colorful labor. For your tenacity and vision, Lennie, I remain in your debt.
For those wanting to read more about this extraordinary period, I offer the following short bibliography:
Leon Alberti. On Painting. Penguin Classics.
Francis Ames-Lewis. Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy. Yale University Press.
Ugo Baldassarri, ed. Images of Quattrocento Florence. Yale University Press.
Michael Baxendale. Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy. Oxford University Press.
Elizabeth Birbari. Dress in Italian Painting. John Murray.
Anthony Blunt. Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600. Oxford University Press.
Eve Borsook. Companion Guide to Florence. Companion Guides.
Cennino Cennini. The Craftsman’s Handbook (Il Libro dell’Arte). Dover Publications.
Christopher Hibbert. The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici. Penguin Books.
Graham Hughes. Renaissance Cassoni. Art Books International.
Lisa Jardine. Worldly Goods. Macmillan.
Luca Landucci, trans. Jervis A. Rosen. A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516. Ayer Company Publications.
Jean Lucas-Dubreton. Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici. Macmillan.
Michael Rocke. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. Oxford University Press.
Paola Tinagli. Women in Italian Renaissance Art. Manchester University Press.
Giorgio Vasari, trans. George Bull. Lives of the Artists. Penguin Classics.
Martin Wackernagel. The Work of the Florentine Renaissance Artist. Princeton University Press.
Evelyn Welch. Art and Society in Italy 1350–1500. Oxford University Press.
Christine Klapisch Zuber. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Florence. University of Chicago Press.
For permission to quote from Cantos I and XIII of Mark Musa’s translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, 1: Inferno, published by Penguin Books, I would like to thank the Indiana University Press. For permission to quote from Canto XXXIII of Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds’s translation of The Divine Comedy, 3: Paradise, also published by Penguin Books, I would like to thank David Higham Associates.
PHOTO: © ELLEN WARNER
SARAH DUNANT has written eight novels and edited two books of essays. She has worked widely in print, television, and radio, and until recently hosted the leading BBC Radio arts program, Night Waves. Now a full-time writer, she is adapting her novels Transgressions and Mapping the Edge for the screen. Dunant has two children and lives in London and Florence.
ALSO BY SARAH DUNANT
Mapping the Edge
Transgressions
Under My Skin
Fatlands
Birth Marks
Snow Storms in a Hot Climate
THE BIRTH OF VENUS
SARAH DUNANT
A Reader’s Guide
To print out copies of this or other Random House Reader’s Guides, visit us at www.atrandom.com/rgg
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Alessandra has the will and the talent to be a painter. However, she does not have the training or the social opportunity she needs. How well does The Birth of Venus explain why there are no women’s names in the great roll call of artistic geniuses of the Renaissance?
2. The image of the serpent with a human head is a motif that runs through the novel in many different forms. What are its guises, and how does its meaning shift as the novel progresses?
3. In their own ways, both Alessandra and her mother subvert and rebel against the world they live in. Which one of them do you think is the happiest or most fulfilled?
4. Erila is a slave with no rights or apparent power, so it is ironic that she is the only character in the novel who seems to have any real freedom. How is it that she is able to walk an independent path when those around her are trapped by their circumstances?
5. Lorenzo the Great dies early on in the novel, yet his spirit and that of his family inhabit the book both politically and culturally. What does the book convey about him and the impact that the Medicis had on Florence?
6. Alessandra’s entire world is circumscribed by her belief in God. Yet at the time in which she is writing, there seem to exist two different versions of God; which one predominates depends on whether the believer is a follower of the Renaissance or of Savonarola. What does Alessandra see as the difference between the two versions, and how fairly do you think she judges them?
7. To what extent is Savonarola the villain of the novel?
8. To what degree is this a novel about a city as much as a character?
9. The novel contains many different kinds of love: intellectual, spiritual, sexual, maternal. Which moves you most and why?
10. Alessandra and her brother Tomaso are at odds with each other from the beginning of the novel. To what extent should we trust Alessandra’s judgment of him, given that they are in competition for the same man?
11. How much sympathy do you have for Cristoforo as a character, and what image of homosexual life in Florence do you derive from his thoughts and actions?
12. Alessandra’s marriage, though painful in some ways, is in other ways quite fulfilling, given the confines of the time. In an era when women were seen as fundamentally inferior, do you think it would have been possible for them to have an equal relationship sexually and intellectually with men?
13. In the fifteenth century, melancholy was the only word in use to describe the psychological state of depression, and there was no treatment for the condition. How different would suffering from depression have been in a time when all meaning was seen to emanate from God? And why does the painter fall into such a state?
14. The convent described at the end of the novel is based on real records and real places. If you were a woman in fifteenth-century Florence, would you have preferred to live outside or inside its walls?
Praise for THE BIRTH OF VENUS
“Smart and engaging . . . The pages are filled not only with long and lovingly detailed descriptions of works of art, but also with vivid images. . . . Dunant does a remarkable job evoking Florence.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Sarah Dunant credibly re-creates a past world and evokes a young woman’s passion for its art. . . . The plot is full of twists. . . . The biggest surprise for a reader of latter-day fiction is a heroine who, rather than wither under the constraints of patriarchal society, manages to thrive within it.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A broad mural bursting with color, passion and intrigue . . . Sixteenth-century Florence may have been long ago and far away, but as Dunant adroitly demonstrates, its political and religious turmoil . . . have eerie parallels in the present day.”
—People
“Alessandra Cecchi begins her recollections in the year 1492. . . . Her city is
the center of an explosion of artistic enterprise. . . . Historically, this is a fascinating moment. . . . Alessandra narrates her life story with an eye to the telling detail.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Dunant has given us a story of sacrifice and betrayal, set during Florence’s captivity under the fanatic Savonarola. She writes like a painter, and thinks like a philosopher: juxtapositioning the humane against the animal, hope against fanaticism, creativity against destruction.”
—Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
“A beautiful serpent of a novel, seductive and dangerous . . . full of wise guile, the most brilliant novel yet from a writer of powerful historical imagination and wicked literary gifts.”
—Simon Schama
“A beguiling story.”
—Time
“Dunant blends the historical—the artistic ferment of the Italian Renaissance, the constricted roles allotted to women and gays, the central position of religion in people’s lives—with Alessandra’s personal story. . . . An evocation of a distant past with powerful implications for the present, The Birth of Venus offers the reader a genuine labor of love.”
—USA Today
“From its first arresting sentence, this rich historical novel set in Renaissance Italy compels us. . . . We are thus hooked, within a few seductively well-written pages, by Sarah Dunant, a skilled storyteller who spins out her almost operatic tale. . . . Vividly described . . . the novel takes on the taut pace of a thriller. . . . Based on historical research that informs without being intrusive . . . this novel satisfies on many levels.”
—Baltimore Sun
“Smart and engaging . . . Dunant has injected a kind of realpolitik into the genre, making it far more poignant and interesting.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A juicy, entertaining historical novel with a well set-up plot, lively and surprising characters and a lot of information about the colorful place—Renaissance Florence—in which it’s set. What makes The Birth of Venus work is Dunant’s skill at bringing characters to life. . . . A smart and satisfying read.”
—San Jose Mercury News
2004 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Sarah Dunant
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2004 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This work was originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Little, Brown, an imprint of Time Warner Books UK, in 2003, and in the United States by Random House, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2004.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunant, Sarah.
The birth of Venus : a novel / Sarah Dunant.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Florence (Italy)—History—1421–1737—Fiction. 2. Savonarola, Girolamo, 1452–1498—Fiction. 3. Arranged marriage—Fiction. 4. Women painters—Fiction. 5. Married women—Fiction. 6. Teenage girls—Fiction. 7. Painters—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.U45756B58 2004
823'.914—dc21 2003046932
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-442-5
v3.0
Sarah Dunant, The Birth of Venus
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