The Birth of Venus

A Novel

By: Sarah Dunant

Narrated by: Kathe Mazur

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.

The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.©2004 Sarah Dunant; (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Simply amazing, so brilliantly written...almost intolerably exciting at times, and at others, equally poignant.”
–Antonia Fraser

“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. Dunant’s snaky tale of art, sex and Florentine hysteria consumes utterly–but the experience is all pleasure.”
–Simon Schama

“Sarah 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. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force.”
–Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

“Dunant has created a vivid and compellingly believable picture of Renaissance Florence: the squalor and brutality; the confidence and vitality; the political machinations. Her research has obviously been meticulous....A magnificent novel.”
–The Telegraph (London)

“It’s to Dunant’s credit that the vast quantities of historical information in this book are deployed so naturally and lightly....On the simplest level, this is an erotic and gripping thriller, but its intellectual excitement also comes from the way Dunant makes the art and philosophy of the period look new and dangerous again....Theology has rarely looked so sexy.”
–The Independent (London)

“No one should visit Tuscany this summer without this book. It is richly textured and driven by a thrillerish fever.”
–The Times (London)

“[Dunant’s] control, pace, and instinct are well-nigh impeccable.”
–The Financial Times

Romantic story about art and Florence

Didn’t want it to end. Loved the combination of history and art in Florence. Well read.

Like you're in the story

The life and the political history of Florence come alive as you experience Alissandra's life. You feel her lust for independence, thwarted by the confines of her society, and also her frustration to learn and further her passion for painting. Was hard to stop listening so I could go
about my day in this world!

Stay with it.

It took a second try to become absorbed in this story . Initially it seemed strange and slow, not up to the caliber of Sarah Dunant's other books.Ive enjoyed. However she gradually pulls you into the life of Alessandra and her search for a life of meaning and discovery while her world tumults and the arts undergo transformation .

Great Listen

I loved this book from the very beginning till the end. The storyline, as well as the beautiful expression of thought and feeling pulled me inside the life of Alessandra and I could not wait to see what would happen next. I loved the narrrator's reading of the story too. While she did not get overly dramatic, the characters were clearly distinguishable and I could feel the emotions being played out in her tone of voice.
The book tells the story of an Italian girl coming of age during the end of the 15th century in Florence, Italy. She is a regular girl many of us can relate to from our own lives. It made me think of what my life would have been like, had I been born during those times.

Remarkable subject matter -- successful execution

While I agree that the narrator had significant deficiencies, the story was compelling enough to overlook her difficulties with some rather complex characters and dialects. The story is a fantastic brocade of art, history, and substantial character development. All of the characters make decisions that are unrealistic at times based on motives difficult to comprehend, but the story as a whole still holds together well. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in learning about Italian art in the Medici era from a very different point of view and hearing a remarkable love story at the same time.