The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence

The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence

Author: Alyssa Palombo

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1466882646

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"In the tradition of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Palombo has married fine art with romantic historical fiction in this lush and sensual interpretation of Medici Florence, artist Sandro Botticelli, and the muse that inspired them all." - Booklist 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. 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.


Autumn in Venice

Autumn in Venice

Author: Andrea Di Robilant

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1101946660

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The illuminating story of writer and muse—which also examines the cost to a young woman of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrity—Autumn in Venice is an intimate look at Hemingway’s final years. In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called “absolutely god-damned wonderful.” A year shy of his fiftieth birthday, Hemingway hadn’t published a novel in nearly a decade when he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Here Andrea di Robilant re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship, during which Adriana inspired a man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and into the Trees, and continued to visit Venice to see her; when the Ivanciches traveled to Cuba, Adriana was there as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea.


The Girl from Venice

The Girl from Venice

Author: Martin Cruz Smith

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-10-18

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1439140235

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Cenzo is a world-weary fisherman, determined to sit out the rest of the war. He's happy to stay out of the way of the SS, quietly going about his business of fishing in the lagoons of northern Italy. Then one night, instead of pulling in his usual haul, Cenzo fishes a young woman out of the canal. Guilia is an Italian Jew who has managed to escape capture and is determined to find her family. This meeting results in them both taking an entirely unexpected journey, and Cenzo suddenly finds himself thrown headlong into the world of international wartime politics, where everyone has their own agenda and nowhere is safe ...


The Book of Venice

The Book of Venice

Author: Elisabetta Baldisserotto

Publisher: Comma Press

Published: 2021-05-27

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 191269753X

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An inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate – the way so many of the city’s residents already have – to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with ‘global pilgrims’... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the ‘impossibly beautiful’, frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year – a city about which, Henry James once wrote, ‘there is nothing new to be said.’ Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.


A Venetian Affair

A Venetian Affair

Author: Andrea Di Robilant

Publisher: HarperPerennial

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781841155425

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In the attic of their old family palazzo on the Grand Canal, Andrea di Robilant's father had found the love letters of their ancestor Andrea Memmo, one of the last great Venetian statesmen, to a beautiful half-English girl named Giustiniana Wynne. Some of the letters were written in code, which di Robilant and his father cracked to reveal an illicit passion: Giustiniana was not of the elite ruling class and would never have been considered a suitable match for Andrea. But their acts of devotion were startlingly brazen. As their courtship unfolds, they plot elaborate marriage schemes that offend everyone, arrange secret trysts in borrowed rooms, cause trouble for the servants who must ferry their forbidden correspondence, and even weather an unwanted pregnancy, from which Giustiniana, with her wits and ingenuity and some crucial assistance from the infamous Casanova, emerges unscathed.


Renaissance Woman

Renaissance Woman

Author: Ramie Targoff

Publisher:

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0374140944

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A biography of Vittoria Colonna, a confidante of Michelangelo, the scion of one of the most powerful families of her era, and a pivotal figure in the Italian Renaissance Ramie Targoff’s Renaissance Woman tells of the most remarkable woman of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa of Pescara. Vittoria has long been celebrated by scholars of Michelangelo as the artist’s best friend—the two of them exchanged beautiful letters, poems, and works of art that bear witness to their intimacy—but she also had close ties to Charles V, Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, Reginald Pole, and Isabella d’Este, among others. Vittoria was the scion of an immensely powerful family in Rome during that city’s most explosively creative era. Art and literature flourished, but political and religious life were under terrific strain. Personally involved with nearly every major development of this period—through both her marriage and her own talents—Vittoria was not only a critical political actor and negotiator but also the first woman to publish a book of poems in Italy, an event that launched a revolution for Italian women’s writing. Vittoria was, in short, at the very heart of what we celebrate when we think about sixteenth-century Italy; through her story the Renaissance comes to life anew.


The Violinist of Venice

The Violinist of Venice

Author: Alyssa Palombo

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-12-15

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1466882638

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Like most 18th century Venetians, Adriana d'Amato adores music—except her strict merchant father has forbidden her to cultivate her gift for the violin. But she refuses to let that stop her from living her dreams and begins sneaking out of her family's palazzo under the cover of night to take violin lessons from virtuoso violinist and composer Antonio Vivaldi. However, what begins as secret lessons swiftly evolves into a passionate, consuming love affair. Adriana's father is intent on seeing her married to a wealthy, prominent member of Venice's patrician class—and a handsome, charming suitor, whom she knows she could love, only complicates matters—but Vivaldi is a priest, making their relationship forbidden in the eyes of the Church and of society. They both know their affair will end upon Adriana's marriage, but she cannot anticipate the events that will force Vivaldi to choose between her and his music. The repercussions of his choice—and of Adriana's own choices—will haunt both of their lives in ways they never imagined. Spanning more than 30 years of Adriana's life, Alyssa Palombo's The Violinist of Venice is a story of passion, music, ambition, and finding the strength to both fall in love and to carry on when it ends.


One Summer in Venice

One Summer in Venice

Author: Nicky Pellegrino

Publisher: Orion

Published: 2015-04-14

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1409150844

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'This isn't a mid-life crisis OK? For a start I'm not old enough yet to have one of those. I'm calling it a happiness project. I've stolen an entire summer from my life and by the time it's over I plan to leave this place with a list in my hand. The ten things that make me happy, that's all I want to know. How difficult can it be? They may be small things - a perfect cup of coffee, a day without rain - or bigger ones. It's still the beginning so how can I know?' Addolorata Martinelli knows she should be happy. She has everything she thought she wanted - her own business, a husband, a child. So why does she feel as if something is missing? Then when her restaurant, Little Italy, is slated by a reviewer, she realises that she's lost the one thing she thought she could always count on, her love of food. So Addolorata heads to Venice for a summer alone, aiming to find the ten things that make her happy. Once she's found them, she'll construct a new life around her ten things, but will they include her life in London? Readers are loving Nicky Pellegrino! 'I could smell the fresh pasta, feel the sunshine, smell the sea breeze and feel my worries wash away. It was lovely to stumble down the cobbled paths and stroll along the beautiful scenery' 'Through Italy, through food, through heartbreak, through love, through family. Add in a pinch of karmic justice and you have the perfect read with a joyful ending!' 'Once again Nicky Pellegrino had me captivated with this amazing story. It made me laugh, made me cry. I read it in one afternoon' 'I will say that if you are a woman on the cusp of discovering who you are and what your heart desires...then you will devour this book as I did' 'Such a great escapism read, full of emotions and family drama with love'


A Thousand Days in Venice

A Thousand Days in Venice

Author: Marlena De Blasi

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1616202815

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De Blasi, a chef and food writer from St. Louis, begins a whirlwind romance with a man in Venice.