The Botticelli Secret

by Marina Fiorato

Overview

In this exhilarating cross between The Da Vinci Code and The Birth of Venus, an irrepressible young woman in 15th-century Italy must flee for her life after stumbling upon a deadly secret when she serves as a model for Botticelli...

When part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra is asked by one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, she doesn't mind serving as the model for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece "Primavera." But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals an unfinished version of the painting--only to find that somone is ready to kill her to get it back.

What could possibly be so valuable about the picture? As friends and clients are slaughtered around her, Luciana turns to the one man who has never desired her beauty, novice librarian Brother Guido. Fleeing Venice together, Luciana and Guido race through the nine cities of Renaissance Italy, pursued by ruthless foes who are determined to keep them from decoding the painting's secrets.

Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, The Botticelli Secret is an irresistible blend of history, wit, and suspense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429928809
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	03/30/2010
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	7,315
File size:	931 KB

About the Author

Marina Fiorato is half-Venetian and a history graduate of Oxford University and the University of Venice, where she specialized in the study of Shakespeare's plays as an historical source. She has worked as an illustrator, an actress, and a film reviewer, and designed tour visuals for rock bands including U2 and the Rolling Stones. Her historical fiction includes The Daughter of Siena and her debut novel, The Glassblower of Murano, which was an international bestseller. She was married on the Grand Canal in Venice, and now lives in London with her family.

Marina Fiorato is half-Venetian and a history graduate of Oxford University and the University of Venice, where she specialized in the study of Shakespeare's plays as an historical source. She has worked as an illustrator, an actress, and a film reviewer, and designed tour visuals for rock bands including U2 and the Rolling Stones. Her historical fiction includes the Venetian Bargain, The Daughter of Siena, The Botticelli Secret, and her debut novel, The Glassblower of Murano, which was an international bestseller. She was married on the Grand Canal in Venice, and now lives in London with her family.

Read an Excerpt

Florence, June 1482
1
Florence looks like gold and smells like sulphur.
The buildings are massive, gorgeous, and epic. They are made of glowing gilded stone and silver marble. Yet the smells—animal dung, human waste, rotting meat and vegetables left in the gutter from market—would make a tanner blanch. In fact, the city is a mass of contradictions. It is built for giants, with the huge loggias, toothsome palaces, and massy pillars, yet the Florentines are a tiny people and scuttle around the plinths like brightly dressed pygmies. The only citizens that truly fit such a scale are the statues that wrestle their stony bouts in the Piazza della Signoria.
Florence is beautiful and brutal. Her beauty is skin deep; underneath, the blood runs very near the surface. Wondrous palaces and chapels stand right next to the Bargello jail, a place worse than the Inferno. In every church, heaven and hell coexist on the walls. These opposite fates sit cheek by jowl on the ceilings too, divided only by the crossribs. In the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, our great cathedral, angels and demons whirl around together in a celestial fortune’s wheel. Paradise and damnation are so close, so very close. Even the food is a contradiction. Take my favorite food, carpaccio: slabs of raw meat fair running with blood. It’s delicious, but something had to die to make it.
On the streets, too, gods and monsters live together. I have no illusions. I am one of the monsters—Luciana Vetra, part-time model and full-time whore. The preachers spill poison about the likes of me from their pulpits, and decent women spit at me in the street. The Lord and the Devil compete for the souls of the Florentines, and sometimes I think the Devil is winning; if you enter the Battistero and look upon the mosaics of the Last Judgment, which bit do you look at first? Heaven, with the do-gooding angels and their haloes and hallelujahs? Or hell, with the long-eared Lucifer devouring the damned? And if you were to read Signor Dante’s Divina commedia, would you start with Paradiso, with its priests and pope-holy prelates? Or the Inferno, where the skies rain blood and feckless nobles fry feet first? You know the answer. So there was I, a jade and a jezebel, reviled by decent folk, touting one or more of the Deadly Sins on the street. A lost sheep. Sometimes, though, a shepherd will come among us, one of the godly, selling salvation.
And that’s how I met Brother Guido della Torre.
It was not an auspicious meeting. He did not see me at my best. I was dressed in my best, to be sure, for I am always aware of the passing trade. But I happened to be sitting on the balustrade of the river, pissing into the Arno. Framed poetically by the saffron arches of the Ponte Vecchio looming behind. In fairness, it would not have been immediately obvious to the good brother what I was doing, as my skirts were voluminous. But I had just come from Bembo’s bed, was on my way to Signor Botticelli’s studio, and the quantity of muscat I had drunk for breakfast begged for evacuation.
Actually, I’m telling this all wrong—before we go on to talk about Brother Guido, and the right path, let me give you a glimpse of my old life, and the wrong one. Because unless you know about Bembo, and how I came to model for Signor Botticelli, you will never get to understand the secret, and the secret is the story. So let’s go back to . . . the night before? No; no need to take you through all the depraved sex acts we committed for pleasure on Bembo’s part and payment on mine. That morning would be time enough: Friday, the thirteenth of June, an unlucky day for so many reasons. Spring—the right place to start.
Excerpted from The Botticelli Secret by .
Copyright © 2010 by Marina Fiorato.
Published in April 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

Reading Group Guide

In this exhilarating cross between The Da Vinci Code and The Birth of Venus, an irrepressible young woman in 15th-century Italy must flee for her life after stumbling upon a deadly secret when she serves as a model for Botticelli...

When part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra is asked by one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, she doesn't mind serving as the model for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece "Primavera." But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals an unfinished version of the painting--only to find that somone is ready to kill her to get it back.

What could possibly be so valuable about the picture? As friends and clients are slaughtered around her, Luciana turns to the one man who has never desired her beauty, novice librarian Brother Guido. Fleeing Venice together, Luciana and Guido race through the nine cities of Renaissance Italy, pursued by ruthless foes who are determined to keep them from decoding the painting's secrets.

Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, The Botticelli Secret is an irresistible blend of history, wit, and suspense.

Editorial Reviews

The city-states of Renaissance Italy serve as the vibrant backdrop for this less than successful homage to The Da Vinci Code from Fiorato (TheGlassblower of Murano). In 1482 Florence, while prostitute Luciana Vetra is posing for Botticelli’s Primavera, she makes a casual comment that terrifies the artist. Sent away unpaid, Luciana steals a miniature of the painting in revenge. When she discovers that an assassin is on her trail, she flees Florence with the most trustworthy companion she can find, handsome and cultured monk Brother Guido della Torre. As the two decode the secrets hidden in the painting (and fall in love), its meanings send them on a quest through Italy to save their own lives and avert a conspiracy involving the greatest powers of the day. Luciana’s energetic narrative voice keeps the pages turning, but lengthy passages deconstructing La Primavera yield secrets, unlike those in Dan Brown’s bestseller, with little resonance for modern readers. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Fiorato (The Glassblower of Murano) crafts a historical novel in the style of Susan Vreeland's Girl with a Pearl Earring blended with painting as code à la The Da Vinci Code. The painting at issue is Botticelli's Primavera. What if one of the most famous paintings in the world was actually an elaborate military blueprint depicted symbolically? We shadow Luciana Vetra, a beautiful and foul-mouthed whore, through 15th-century Florence and much of Renaissance Italy. Employed by Botticelli as a model for one of the primary figures in the painting, Luciana becomes embroiled in intrigue when her theft of a preliminary sketch is discovered, and she is thought to know more than she does about its secret purpose. The clever nature of the interpretation of Primavera is not Fiorato's but based upon several scholarly resources cited in the author's note. VERDICT The heroine's foul mouth may be off-putting to some sensitive readers. Additionally, while large portions of the book read more like a romance than a historical thriller, romance readers will likely find it too crass. In the end, it seems as if the author had two books in mind. Recommended for libraries with generous budgets to purchase all new novels.—Laura A.B. Cifelli, Ft. Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., FL

Library Journal

Da Vinci had a code; now it's Botticelli's turn. Lusty, foul-mouthed Florentine prostitute Luciana happily plies her trade on the Ponte Vecchio in 1482. Her beauty attracts wealthy clients like Bembo, whose priceless black pearl is embedded in her navel. So when Franciscan novice Brother Guido offers her a religious pamphlet, she scoffs. She enjoys the oldest profession, and she's even been tapped to model for the goddess of spring, one of eight mythical figures depicted in Botticelli's latest masterpiece, Primavera. After she poses, Luciana steals a cartone, template for the larger Primavera, and replaces it with Guido's pamphlet. When she returns to her hovel, she finds her roommate dead, throat cut. Fearing she's angered agents of Florentine despot Lorenzo de' Medici, Luciana flees to Bembo, but the throat-slashers get there first. Off to Brother Guido's monastery, where the bloodletting continues. The cartone must be valuable, but why? Guido hopes his noble uncle, Lord Sylvio of Pisa, can intervene with Lorenzo. But Sylvio is poisoned, and his son Niccolo wants Guido dead. The cartone, and Primavera itself, apparently encode a nefarious plot by the Seven, magnates of Italia's fractious city-states, but to what end? Learning that His Holiness is a co-conspirator shakes Guido's faith-a positive development for Luciana, who hopes he'll defrock them both. Eventually, Luciana encounters her long-lost mother, the ruthless Dogaressa of Venice, who consigned her to a convent as a baby after political enemies threatened her life. Guido is arrested, and Luciana whisked back to Venice; she has been promised since infancy to Niccolo as part of her parents' political schemes. Luciana must escapeher mother, find Guido and avert the conspiracy. Though Fiorato (The Glassblower of Murano, 2009, etc.) minutely and tediously parses every development for clues, she glides right over the big question of why convent-raised Luciana strolled off at age 12 with someone who promised her a pretty dress and cheerfully spent the next four years as a street trollop. Intricate but derivative.

Kirkus Reviews

Fiorato creates her own masterpiece set at the height of Medici power. Renaissance Italy comes alive in brilliant sights and sounds from marbled halls to filthy sewers. Luciana is irrepressible, unabashed, and an absolute hoot while Guido foils her nicely as the learned, noble Holmes to her Watson.” -Booklist

Praise for Marina Fiorato's previous novel, THE GLASSBLOWER OF MURANO:

"Marina Fiorato has fashioned a double tale of artistry, love, and intrigue, plotted as cunningly as her characters commit treachery....It took my breath away." –Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue

"An intriguing mix of history, mystery, art, music, poetry, romance, and politics....Gripping....Writing with charm and authenticity, Fiorato produces a blend of historical mystery and modern romance that is thoroughly entertaining." —Booklist

"Those who enjoy intrigue and European history will be easily drawn into this romantic story." —Publishers Weekly

"Fiorato captivates her reader as surely and intricately as the beautiful city of Venice enchants her characters. A fascinating tale of mystery and dedication, of love and betrayal." —Kate Furnivall, author of The Russian Concubine

"The Glassblower of Murano is a compelling story, richly detailed, with wonderful, memorably drawn characters." —Diane Haeger, author of The Ruby Ring

"Marina Fiorato has beautifully recreated the bright, glittering world of the seventeenth-century glassblower, and nestled it surely within a compelling contemporary romance." —Jeanne Kalogrides, author of The Borgia Bride

From the Publisher