One really should read this book after a visit to Florence, Italy and having some time spent there. This is a historical novel woven around the time just after the death of Lorenzo Medici, or Lorenzo the Magnificent who was a great patron of the arts during the Medicis' domination of Florence. That was when renaissance was in full swing.
The title of the book makes you think that the story has something to do with the painting of the same name by Sandro Botticelli. The painting is in the Uffizi museum in Florence. Neither the painting nor Botticelli plays any part in the story.
The book is written in first-person by Alexandra as her autobiography. Alexandra is from a moderately wealthy family in Florence. She is too tall and not very good-looking, and she loves to paint, which is not something women of that age are expected to do. She is also well-educated in Latin and Greek. That is another quality that women are not encouraged to possess. Women are expected to find a good husband as soon as they reach child-bearing age. But, who would marry such a unique or unconventional woman? So, the mother marries her off to a much older man, Cristoforo, who is well-off. Not only does Cristoforo prefer men but he is also in love with Alexandra's brother, who was actually instrumental in suggesting the match!
Alexandra is attracted to a reclusive painter. He was hired to construct the family's chapel and to paint the chapel's frescos that depict the family members in the roles of the religious characters in the frescos, as it was customary for wealthy families of those times. But as she is married off to Cristoforo she discovers to her shock of his proclivity for the other sex and she is only expected to produce an heir after one belabored sexual encounter with Cristoforo. The redeeming feature of this arrangement is that Cristoforo is erudite and perfectly fine with Alexandra's education and her desire to paint.
Anyway, I am not sure if I read the whole book with interest because the story is good as is the writing, or because of my recent visit to Florence this summer and my bingeing of the Netflix series, Medici the Magnificent, right after my return from Tuscany. As I read the book it felt as if I was back in Florence since I had recently visited so many of the places mentioned in the book and I could put faces, albeit of the actors in the series, to the characters in the book. But, I did pick up the book in the library because of its title and cover, which I have already said has nothing to do with the story, to support the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover".
