Publication date: October 2024

Paperback – 216 x 138 mm – 448 pages

Forty colour illustrations

ISBN 9781843682608

‘Beauty is the beacon of God,’ said Botticelli. ‘No, it’s not. Love is,’ snapped his sister.

Beauty: Botticelli in Florence imagines what Botticelli was feeling and thinking as he painted. The people he loved and despised, his private struggle between spirituality and sensuality, the tempestuous times he lived through – all come to life in his images…

The novel is a speculation based on the few facts known about Botticelli, informed by his paintings. There are many surprises. The Birth of Venus is a tapestry design. And his famed self-portrait doesn’t depict him (as widely believed) but Pierfrancesco de Medici, who sues his powerful cousin Lorenzo for robbing him, abolishes Florence’s homophobic witch-hunts, funds Vespucci’s journey to the New World and commissions Botticelli’s most famous works. There is boiling tension between him and Botticelli.

This is the first in a sequence of illustrated ‘painting novels’ that make sights as telling as words. Love: Giorgione and Titian in Venice and Truth: Leonardo in France will follow.