{"product_id":"the-birth-of-venus-a-novel-rea","title":"THE BIRTH OF VENUS: A NOVEL (REA","description":"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.\n\nBut 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.\n\nThe 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.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0812968972\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: 31UMYP002VFT_ns\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Acceptable\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Dunant, Sarah\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing  age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42993260822589,"sku":"31UMYP002VFT_ns","price":5.88,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/0812968972-0.jpg?v=1771103071","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/the-birth-of-venus-a-novel-rea","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}