Sarah Dunant - The Birth of Venus & In The Company of The Courtesan Renaissance

This listing is for Renaissance Classics by Sarah Dunant - The Birth of Venus & In The Company of The Courtesan.

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant. 

The Renaissance must surely be one of the most important periods in art history. Just think of the major works such as Michaelangelo's David, DaVinci's Last Supper and Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
I would love to go and see some of the major art galleries of the world to see these works with the Uffizi in Florence at the top of my list. Luckily I have recently had a taste of Renaissance Florence due to reading a wonderful novel called “The Birth of Venus” by Sarah Dunant.

“Birth of Venus” is set in late fifteenth and early sixteenth Florence. The plot revolves around the main character Alessandra Cecchi the younger teenage daughter of a nouveau riche cloth merchant . The book is about her fascination with the new forms of art introduced into Florence and more specifically her fascination and developing relationship with the unnamed artist from the north (Flanders perhaps) that her father commissions to paint their chapel and wedding portraits for her sister Plautilla's wedding. In the background a number of mutilated corpses are found on the streets of Florence whilst moral war is raging as the decadent Medici's are toppled and the pious mad monk Savonrola is on a mission to save Florence's soul.

Sarah Dunant is better known for her crime novels (alongside being a broadcast journalist and judge on the panel for the Orange Prize for Women's Fiction) and thus has gathered on some of her experience in that genre to make this book a highly readable book. I found that at 405 pages it was pretty compelling Part of this is due to how the book starts. This is one of those book that actually starts at the end. In the prologue Sister Lucretia, an elderly nun is dying from breast cancer. When her fellow sisters prepare her body for burial after her death they get a hidden surprise or two They find that her cancer is not a cancer but a pig's bladder attached to her breast and that she has an erotic tattoo of a serpent with a man's face painted across her torso. From then on the novel is written n the form of memoirs by Alessandra/Sister Lucretia (I twigged very early on that they were the same person). I found this beginning very effective as I was focused on the book wanting to know why Alessandra became Sister Lucretia and how did the unusual tattoo come about.

In some ways you could describe “Birth of Venus” as a coming of age novel. Alessandra certainly grows up and discovers herself throughout th pages of the novel. She's a likable character and s reminds me a little bit of a Renaissance version of Jo March from LM Alcott's Little Women. especially at the beginning of the book. They are both strong willed almost tomboyish characters who feel imprisoned by the traditional roles that women played in their society. They are both more interested in scholarship, who treasure learning, art and freedom more than dancing and dressing up. This comparison can be further extended with Alessandra's relationship to her more feminine sister Plautilla. The scene where Plautilla is sunning her hair to make it blonder reminds me of Amy March with her clothes peg on her nose at night. The other thing that interstice about Alessandra's coming of age was the age in which girls were betrothed to get married. It seemed to be he tradition to marry the girl off as soon as she started menstruating. I have read Romeo and Juliet (set in a similar time in a similar culture) and find it an interesting comparison to our attitudes to teenage sex and pregnancy which is a major issue and almost a taboo. It is easy to forgot that the age of consent was only fixed at 16 (in Britain) in Victorian times to protect child brides.

However the main star of the book was Renaissance Florence itself. Dunant has a passion for Florence and Renaissance Art and this shows through in the amount of research she carried out to bring the setting to life. I do not know that much about this period but the book really gave me a glimpse of this era in Florence's history. I was vaguely aware of the Bonfire of Vanities (a large bonfire where precious, ornate and blasphemous items were brunt) but did not know the specifics.. The “Birth of Venus” gave me a starting point for me to investigate this period in history in greater depth. I really could imagine the busy city in all its glory from the market to the frescoes in the churches. Be warned this is not sanitised history, I would not read this book whilst eating as there are graphic (but not gratuitous) descriptions of horrible diseases methods of torture and horrible mutilations.

I hope to experience the wonders of Florence and the Uffizi Gallery sometime. ~duskmaiden

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

I spent last fall living in Venice, which is less an ordinary city than a fantasy of bridges, domes, water, and light that has barely changed (in appearance, at least) since its glory days almost 500 years ago. Sarah Dunant's new historical novel, IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN, is set mostly in this cryptic and magical place, and reading it, for me, was a little like going back.

But the book is not strong on atmosphere alone. It left me quite convinced that every would-be historical novelist should first take a course in thriller-writing. Dunant's exceptionally intelligent, literate, sexy suspense novels preceded her forays into historical fiction, and the discipline of creating a swiftly moving narrative that develops and resolves on several levels seems to have carried over. Too many contributions to this newly trendy genre seem devoid of tension while bloated with the sort of period detail that serves to show off the writer's copious research rather than to advance the story. In contrast, THE BIRTH OF VENUS --- Dunant's first historical novel, set in 15th-century Florence --- and now IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN are lean, psychologically acute, richly imagined tales that evoke the Italian past with beauty and power.

The title makes this book sound like a bodice-ripper, but although there is noticeable erotic content --- the novel is an insider view of the business of high-end prostitution --- it is never gratuitous, and there is little romance in the conventional sense of the word. In fact, it really should have been called IN THE COMPANY OF THE DWARF, because the narrator (and the heart of the novel) is Bucino, a man brilliant in mind and afflicted in body, rather than the 21-year-old courtesan, Fiammetta Bianchini, whom he serves.

The story begins in Rome, where invading soldiers and Protestants (it is the dawn of the Reformation) are sacking the city; thanks to Fiammetta's wit and boldness, she and her dwarfish companion escape with their lives --- and a few large jewels --- to her birthplace, Venice. There they rebuild her "practice" with the help of the writer and sometime pornographer Pietro Aretino and a mysterious blind healer known as La Draga. The enterprise is threatened by Bucino's near-fatal illness, Fiammetta's unwise infatuation with a noble youth, and La Draga's unsuspected secret life --- but IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN, though it makes compelling reading, is not driven by events so much as by ideas (what a concept!) and characters, all of whom are outsiders (and I'm not even counting the Turk and the Jewish convert whom Bucino befriends: Venice, then and now, is nothing if not cosmopolitan).

I don't mean to make IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN sound like hard going (it isn't), but it has real substance. Bucino's observations are often philosophical, sometimes sour, always smart. Here he is on the omnipresence of lust: "If there were not so many rules to hinder them, I think that men would look at women all the time. Once there is food enough in one's stomach what else is there to do in life?" His account of the courtesan as a sort of Renaissance entrepreneur shows Fiammetta's work (and his, as the watchdog, errand boy, entertainer, and financial manager of her household) to be a fascinating mix of theatricality and psychology. "Like most good courtesans," he writes, "she is adept at living with two sets of feelings: the ones she has and the ones she pretends to have to humour her clients. In this way she is often interested when she is bored, sweet when she is peeved, funny when she is sad and always ready to pull back the sheets to play when what she would most like to do is sleep alone in them." Trained to please others, Fiammetta is really not so different from the virtuous married woman of her time and (often) of ours --- neither is free to be herself.

And that is what draws her to Bucino and sustains their partnership, as she explains to Aretino. The writer is speculating (rudely) about why the dwarf is so attractive to women, and Fiammetta replies that she feels more comfortable with him than any other man: "Bucino has a way with women…because he enjoys their company.… He is not frightened of us, and he does not need to impress or possess us --- and you would be amazed, Pietro, how few men that is true of."

With its lively sexual politics, its dark ironies, and its exuberance, color and charm, IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN is one of the best historical novels I've read in years. This is a writer in command of her craft, start to finish. And, true to Dunant's background in suspense fiction, the book ends with a lovely, surprising twist that makes Fiammetta and Bucino's "company" look suspiciously like a real family. Brava.  --- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

These paperback trade versions of the books are in read but very good condition.  Please see my other listings as we have many related items and various other treasures you may be interested in!!!  I do combine winning auctions for savings on shipping and try to keep charges as accurate as possible.  Thanks for visiting our listings and especially for bidding!