The Birth of Venus

In late fifteenth-century Florence, Alessandra Cecchi is more interested in drawing and ideas than in the marriage expected of a merchant’s daughter. When a young painter enters her family’s household to decorate its chapel, his talent awakens her artistic ambition and a dangerous intimacy. An arranged marriage appears to offer freedom, but it binds Alessandra to a private bargain she does not fully understand.

The French invasion drives the Medici from Florence and allows Girolamo Savonarola’s religious movement to reshape the republic. Art, dress, sexuality and private belief come under suspicion as public devotion turns coercive. Alessandra’s struggle to control her body and her work unfolds beside the city’s movement from Renaissance confidence to the Bonfire of the Vanities and Savonarola’s fall.