The Birth of Venus
  • Published:
    Mar-2003 (Hardcover)
    Nov-2004 (Paperback)
  • Formats:
    Print / eBook / Audio
  • Main Genre:
    General Fiction
  • Time Period:
    15th Century
  • Pages:
    448
  • Rating:
  • Purchase:
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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.
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EDITIONS
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    •  
    • Dec-2004
    • Random House
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0812968972
    • ISBN13: 9780812968972
    •  
    • Jul-2007
    • Little, Brown
    • Paperback
    • ISBN: 1844080358
    • ISBN13: 9781844080359
    •  
    • Jan-2013
    • Little, Brown
    • Paperback
    • ISBN: 1844089126
    • ISBN13: 9781844089123
    • First Edition
    • Mar-2003
    • Little, Brown
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0316725498
    • ISBN13: 9780316725491
    •  
    • Jan-2001
    • Little, Brown
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 1405500956
    • ISBN13: 9781405500951
    •  
    • Feb-2004
    • Random House
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 1400060737
    • ISBN13: 9781400060733
    •  
    • Dec-2004
    • Random House Trade Paperbacks
    • eBook (Kindle)
    •  
    • Dec-2004
    • Random House
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 1588364429
    • ISBN13: 9781588364425
    •  
    • Mar-2012
    • Random House
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 0679645497
    • ISBN13: 9780679645498
    •  
    • Mar-2012
    • Random House
    • eBook (Kindle)
    •  
    • Jan-2004
    • Books on Tape
    • Audio Cassette
    • ISBN: 0736699287
    • ISBN13: 9780736699280
    •  
    • Feb-2004
    • Random House Audio
    • Audible
    •  
    • Feb-2004
    • Random House Audio
    • audible.com (abridged)
    •  
    • Feb-2004
    • Random House Audio
    • Audio Cassette
    • ISBN: 0739310526
    • ISBN13: 9780739310526
    •  
    • Feb-2004
    • Random House Audio
    • Audio CD (abridged)
    • ISBN: 0739310534
    • ISBN13: 9780739310533
    •  
    • Aug-2004
    • Thorndike Press
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0786266899
    • ISBN13: 9780786266890
    • Large Print



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