Florence, 1486: a series of murders shocks life in the city.The victims are women belonging to the rich bourgeoisie, and the ruthless assassin seems to take inspiration from the Allegory of Spring, a masterpiece by Sandro Botticelli and his assistant Filippino Lippi. An object is found on each corpse, relating to a detail of the painting: the twig slipped between the lips of a nymph, the red cloak wrapped around the Goddess, the garland of flowers adorning the neck of Spring...Pass...

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni exercised a huge influence on the development of Western art. He is considered a nominee for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Giorgio Vasari proposed that he was the high point of all artistic achievement of the Renaissance. In this way Michelangelo, indirectly, marked the beginning of the next major movement in Wes...

An enchanting novel on the life and origins of Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, as imagined by the author of the “absolutely superb” (Diane Haeger, author of The Secret Bride) Mademoiselle Boleyn.A young woman named Caterina was only fifteen years old in 1452 when she bore an illegitimate child in the tiny village of Vinci. His name was Leonardo, and he was destined to change the world forever.Caterina suffered much cruelty as an unmarried moth...

“Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both.” — Boston Sunday GlobeIn Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time.Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the p...

A solitary child, Leonardo da Vinci's only intimate is Lisa Gherardini, the girl who spies on him in his workshop. Spurned by his tutor, he is sent by his despairing father to Florence as an apprentice. Under the guiding hand of Verrocchio, the master sculptor, he begins to make his name. But success requires sacrifice; Florence demands a level of conformity impossible for him. Forced to leave, Leonardo places himself at the service of the charismatic, power-thirsty Duke of Milan. His jour...

Eloquent and assured, Mary McCarthy's The Stones of Florence beckons the reader on a brisk but sweeping tour of the birthplace of the Renaissance and the legendary home of the Medici, Dante, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other giants of the age. Her keen observations of this famously alluring city speak to Florence's persistent character and magnetism-and the attraction it exerted over the first major wave of American tourists to postwar Europe. These essays, which originally app...

Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and sculptor: as a painter, representative of the very scientific school of draughtsmanship; more famous as a sculptor, being the creator of the Colleoni statue at Venice, Leonardo was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment. He was ...

For centuries Italy has been many things to many people. In this brilliant anthology and traveler's companion, twenty-eight first-rate women writers reveal why the land that is the heart and soul of European civilization is so seductive to women.Kate Simon walks us through a Siena filled with surprises and luminous beauty. Elizabeth Spencer writes of first coming to Italy and finding "home." Shirley Hazzard explores the mysteries of Naples. Muriel Spark writes on V...

A pigeon carrying an important message takes the reader on a unique tour through Rome. As we follow the path of this somewhat wayward bird, we discover that Rome is a place where past and present live side by side. Every time a corner is turned there is a surprise, just as every turn of the page brings a new perspective. This juxtaposition of ancient and modern, as seen with David Macaulay's ingenious vision, gives the reader an imaginative and informative journey through this wondrous cit...

"Rebhorn deserves our gratitude for an eminently persuasive translation. . . . I celebrate his accomplishment."—Edith GrossmanThe year is 1348. The Black Death has begun to ravage Europe. Ten young Florentines—seven women and three men—escape the plague-infested city and retreat to the countryside around Fiesole. At their leisure in this isolated and bucolic setting, they spend ten days telling each other stories—tales of romance, tragedy, comedy, and farce—one hun...

Winner of the Italian PEN Prize: A tale of illicit love and a girl forced into a convent in the early nineteenth century.1839, Messina, Italy: Agata is the daughter of an aristocrat, albeit an impoverished one, and she has fallen in love with wealthy Giacomo Lepre. Their families, however, view their romance as unacceptable and tawdry—and when Agata's father dies, her mother decides to ferry her daughter far away, to Naples, where she hopes to garner a stipend from...

The story of a troupe of actors in seventeenth- century Italy, from "one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers" (Gary Shteyngart).The Glorious Ones are an unlikely troupe of actors, traveling up and down the seventeenth-century Italian countryside performing commedia dell'arte for kings, for peasants, for anyone with coin. There is Armanda, the cheerful dwarf and ex-nun; chattering Columbina; Pantalone the miser; and the wicked Brighella—all led by...