![]() ![]() All of this is eagerly dissected by Alessandra and her middle-aged husband Cristoforo, himself a political player and in mortal danger from "God's militia". The Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola held the populace in his sway for four terrifying years, preaching against moral corruption, material wealth and women (whom he banned first from church and then from the streets). ![]() The city's ruler, Lorenzo de Medici, died in 1492, leaving a void his weak son Piero could scarcely fill. ![]() The last 10 years of the quattrocento were politically tumultuous for Florence. The puzzle is, how has Dunant created a story that is so fresh, vibrant and utterly compelling? The antecedents of The Birth of Venus are clear, and sometimes quite recent - the picture Dunant draws of convent life as a "republic of women" at the book's close owes something to Michèle Roberts. ![]() Her spirited heroine, 14-year-old Alessandra, has a lineage that stretches back to the earliest novels by women: not pretty, but handsome poor at dancing, but brilliant at Latin and Greek she lives for art rather than romance, but is still susceptible to emotion. Dunant's themes are archetypal: women and self-determination, women and creativity, women and marriage, women and God. ![]()
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