I borrowed this book from Russet Vixen, after I heard a book group discussion on it. There were so many interesting plot points that came up, that I wanted to read for myself and find out what the book was about for myself.
The Birth of Venus opens with the death of a nun with a surprising tattoo. From there, we get the life story of the nun with the tattoo, a woman who used to be named Alessandra Cecchi, the daughter of a cloth merchant in Florence during Savonarola’s campaign for God. The characters are well drawn, though some a little sketchy. What this book is really about, I think, is the Renaissance and the changing ideas about virtue.
On the one hand, there has been a resurgence in classical learning, art is flowering, the mind is allowed to explore new areas of though, epicurean pleasures aren’t so frowned on any more. The Renaissance is getting under way. And then, Savonarola shows up on the scene and starts to preach of hellfire and the mortification of the flesh and the mind. Basically, old ideas from the Church rise up to challenge the new ideas. Alessandra gets to narrate the battle between the old and the new.
It’s interesting to watch the conflict go back and forth. The way we learn about it in history classes when we’re younger, it seems like pow! Renaissance and then Columbus starts asking for ships. Apart from the witch trials, it seems like a straight course for the Enlightenment. But it wasn’t nearly that simple. People didn’t just give up how they had been taught to think. Ideas about God and faith and such were in ingrained in people. Savonarola, nut though he may have been, wasn’t the only one to teach about virtue through submission to (his version of) God’s will and mortification of the flesh and senses. That conflict to me was sometimes more interesting than the love stories going on in the book.
Good book. It moved fast enough that it didn’t feel like the usual literary slog. Thanks, Kris! Oh, and thanks for the mention. 🙂