The Birth of Venus
Sarah Dunant, 2003
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812968972
Summary
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter's abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra's parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man.
Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola's reactionary followers.
Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra's married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 8, 1950
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—Silver Dagger Award for Crime Fiction
• Currently—lives in London, England
Sarah Dunant is a writer, broadcaster and critic. She was a founding vice patron of the Orange Prize for women's fiction, sits on the editorial board of the Royal Academy magazine, and reviews for the Times, Guardian, and Independent on Sunday. She teaches creative writing at The Faber Academy in London and biennially at Washington University in St. Louis in its Renaissance studies course. She is also a creative writing fellow at Oxford Brookes University. She has two daughters and lives in London and Florence.
Early career
Dunant was born in London. She attended Godolphin and Latymer School and studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was heavily involved in theatre and the Footlights review. After a brief spell working for the BBC she spent much of her twenties traveling (Japan, India, Asia and Central and South America) before starting to write. Her first two novels, along with a BBC television series, were written with a friend. After this she went solo.
Since then she has written ten novels, three screenplays and edited two books of essays. She has worked in television and radio as a producer and presenter: most notably for BBC Television where for seven years (1989–1996) she presented the live nightly culture programme The Late Show. After that she presented the BBC Radio 3 radio programme Night Waves.
Books
Dunant's work ranges over a number of genres and eras. Her narratives are hard to categorise due to their inventive treatment of time and space, and a favoured device of hers is to run two or more plot strands concurrently, as she does in Mapping the Edge. A common concern running through her work is women's perceptions and points of view, with other themes included.
Her first eight novels were broadly written within a thriller form. Their setting was contemporary and allowed her to explore such themes such as the drug trade, surrogacy, terrorism, animals rights, cosmetic surgery and sexual violence.
Then in 2000 an extended visit to Florence rekindled her first love: History. The novels which followed—The Birth of Venus (2003), In the Company of the Courtesan (2006), and Sacred Hearts (2009) were extensively researched historical explorations of what it was like to be a woman within the Italian Renaissance. The trilogy looked at marriage, the culture of courtesans and the life of cloistered nuns. They were all international best sellers and were translated into over 30 languages.
Her 2013 novel Blood & Beauty centers on a depiction of Italy's Borgia dynasty. It sets out to offer a historically accurate vision of a family who have been much maligned by history. Dunant states in her afterword that she plans to write a second, concluding novel, about the family. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)
Book Reviews
Though The Birth of Venus has been described, for obvious reasons, as serpentine (and it cannot be denied that the plot is so sinuous it defies summary), the imaginative energy of the enterprise is clearly warmblooded, playful, even reckless—more feline than reptilian. Dunant puts me in mind of a well-fed, quick-witted house cat, crouched before the mouse hole of history. She's not that hungry, but she will pounce upon whatever emerges, just for the fun of chasing it all over the house.
Valerie Martin - New York Times
Though Savonarola threatens to destroy Florence, the reader is confident that the city will endure, though not unscathed—much like Alessandra herself. Things cannot go back to the way they were before, and Dunant has injected a kind of realpolitik into the genre, making it far more poignant and interesting.
David Liss - Washington Post
A beautifully written historical novel is always a pleasure, but one that also offers subtle and insightful parallels to events in our own century is a treasure. Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus belongs in the latter category.
Diedre Donahue - USA Today
Lorenzo de’ Medici has just died, Savonarola is busy consigning Florence to the flames, and Alessandra Cecchi, a plain, headstrong girl from a prosperous Florentine family, is about to be married off to a much older suitor (who secretly plans to use her to hide his passion for her brother). Alessandra, who loves to draw, is besotted with the young painter who has been hired to decorate the family chapel. Part feverish thriller, part historical romance, the story of the outspoken heroine’s sentimental education—a comprehensive curriculum including every conceivable transgression—sometimes comes off as a heady blend of Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Anaïs Nin. But Dunant’s skill lies in combining these elements with a finely textured and pertinent depiction of a cultured citizenry in the grip of rampant fundamentalism.
New Yorker Magazine
In this arresting tale of art, love and betrayal in 15th-century Florence, the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant seeks the freedom of marriage in order to paint, but finds that she may have bought her liberty at the cost of love and true fulfillment. Alessandra, 16, is tall, sharp-tongued and dauntingly clever. At first reluctant to agree to an arranged marriage, she changes her mind when she meets elegant 48-year-old Cristoforo, who is well-versed in art and literature. He promises to give her all the freedom she wants-and she finds out why on her wedding night. Her disappointment and frustration are soon overshadowed by the growing cloud of madness and violence hanging over Florence, nourished by the sermons of the fanatically pious Savonarola. As the wealthy purge their palazzos of "low" art and luxuries, Alessandra gives in to the dangerous attraction that draws her to a tormented young artist commissioned to paint her family's chapel. With details as rich as the brocade textiles that built Alessandra's family fortune, Dunant (Mapping the Edge; Transgressions; etc.) masterfully recreates Florence in the age of the original bonfire of the vanities. The novel moves to its climax as Savonarola's reign draws to a bloody close, with the final few chapters describing Alessandra's fate and hinting at the identity of her artist lover. While the story is rushed at the end, the author has a genius for peppering her narrative with little-known facts, and the deadpan dialogue lends a staccato verve to the swift-moving plot. Forget Baedecker and Vasari's Lives of the Artists. Dunant's vivid, gripping novel gives fresh life to a captivating age of glorious art and political turmoil. Dunant's foray into historical fiction (she is best known for her literary suspense novels) will inevitably be compared to Girl with a Pearl Earring. Chevalier readers will certainly enjoy the novel, though its meatier historical background and more robust prose style set it apart.
Publishers Weekly
The Birth of Venus is riveting historical fiction that skillfully weaves the tale of the fictional Alessandra Cecchi with Renaissance Florence, near the end of the 15th century. The book begins with the cleansing of Alessandra's corpse in a convent and the discovery of a snake tattoo on her body, then reverts to the first-person account of her life. The city is in turmoil, under the grip of the fundamentalist monk Savonarola. Alessandra yearns to paint and studies with a young painter her father has brought from the North. To be able to stay in Florence, she has an arranged marriage at the age of 15 to Cristoforo, a wealthy older man, who has a secret that impacts their relationship. Alessandra and Cristoforo witness the rise and fall of Savonarola, whose preaching about morals makes a huge impression, especially on men suspected of homosexuality. A fascinating story that brings the era alive for the listener; it adapts very well to the audio format and is competently and professionally read by Kathe Mazur. Highly recommended. —Mary Knapp, Madison P.L.
Library Journal
British author Dunant 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
Discussion Questions
1. Alessandra has the will and the talent to paint. She does not have the training or the social opportunity. How far does The Birth of Venus explain why, in the great roll call of artistic geniuses of the Renaissance, there are no names ofwomen?
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. Both Alessandra and her mother in their own ways subvert and rebel against the world they are brought up in. Which one of them do you think is the happier or most fulfilled?
4. The only character in the novel who seems to have any real freedom is Erila, yet ironically she is a slave with no rights or apparent power. How is it that she can walk such an independent path when those around her are so trapped?
5. Lorenzo the Great dies early on into the novel, yet his spirit and that of his family, stalk the book both politically and culturally. What image do you get of him and the impact that the De Medici's had on Florence?
6. Alessandra's entire world is contained by her belief in God. Yet in the time she is writing there seems to be almost two different kinds of God, depending on whether you are a follower of the renaissance or of Savonarola. How does Alessandra see the difference between the two and how fairly do you think she judges them?
7. How far is Savonarola the villain of the novel?
8. How far is this a novel about a city as much as a character?
9. The novels contains many different kinds of love: intellectual, spiritual, sexual, maternal. Which moves you most and why?
10. Alessandro and her brother Tomaso are at odds with each other form the beginning of the novel. But how far should we trust Alessandra's judgement 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 kind of portrait of homosexual life in Florence do you get 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. At a time when women were seen as so fundamentally inferior, do you think it would have been possible for them to have an equal relationship sexually and intellectually with men?
13. In 15th century there was also no word for depression, only melancholy, and no treatment. How different would suffering depression have been in time when all meaning was seen to stem from God? And why does the painter fall into this trap?
(Questions issued by publishers.)
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