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Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
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Alyssa Palombo's The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence vividly captures the dangerous allure of the artist and muse bond with candor and unforgettable passion.
A girl as beautiful as Simonetta Cattaneo never wants for marriage proposals in 15th Century Italy, but she jumps at the chance to marry Marco Vespucci. Marco is young, handsome and well-educated. Not to mention he is one of the powerful Medici family's favored circle.
Even before her marriage with Marco is set, Simonetta is swept up into Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici's glittering circle of politicians, poets, artists, and philosophers. The men of Florence - most notably the rakish Giuliano de' Medici - become enthralled with her beauty. That she is educated and an ardent reader of poetry makes her more desirable and fashionable still. But it is her acquaintance with a young painter, Sandro Botticelli, which strikes her heart most. Botticelli immediately invites Simonetta, newly proclaimed the most beautiful woman in Florence, to pose for him. As Simonetta learns to navigate her marriage, her place in Florentine society, and the politics of beauty and desire, she and Botticelli develop a passionate intimacy, one that leads to her immortalization in his masterpiece, The Birth of Venus.
1
Genoa, 1469
"Simonetta!"
I heard my mother's voice drift down the hall as she drew nearer. Not too loud—a lady never shouted, after all—but the urgency in her tone was more than enough to convey the importance of this day, this moment.
I met the gaze of my maid, Chiara, in the Venetian glass mirror. She smiled encouragingly from where she stood behind me, sliding the final pins into my hair. "Nearly finished, Madonna Simonetta," she said. "And if he wants you that badly, he will wait."
I smiled back, but my own smile was less sure.
My mother, however, had a different idea. "Make haste," she said as she appeared in the room. "Chiara, we want to show off that magnificent hair, not pin it up as though she is some common matron."
"Si, Donna Cattaneo," Chiara responded. Dutifully, she stepped back from the dressing table and my mother motioned for me to rise from my seat.
"Che bella, figlia mia!" my mother exclaimed as she took me in, dressed in my finest: a brand-new gown of ...
Although I felt as if I were on a tour of Florence at times, the city comes across as the metropolis of today and not the Renaissance. Despite the author's exceptional ability to describe what her heroine would have been seeing and experiencing, I somehow never got the sense of time. Readers should be advised that the book can safely be shelved in the "Romance" section of their local bookstore. Regardless, The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence will likely be very satisfying for most historical fiction fans, particularly those interested in Renaissance Italy and novels that revolve around great works of art...continued
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
One of the main characters in Alyssa Palombo's novel, The Most Beautiful Girl in Florence, is a fictional representation of Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), one of the de facto rulers of the Republic of Florence during the height of the Italian Renaissance.
The illustrious de' Medici family was prominent in the banking industry, with their institution becoming the largest bank in Europe during the 15th century. Lorenzo's grandfather Cosimo (1389-1464) was the first to combine the family's financial wealth with political influence, gradually establishing his family's prominence in Florence through bribes, threats and marriages of political convenience. Cosimo's son Piero (1416-1469) inherited the family businesses, but it was Piero's son...
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