Laura Morowitz

I picked this book up off the new arrivals shelf at the library and wasn’t sure what to expect. I have enjoyed quite a few books about Italian Renaissance art and if I ever go to Italy I’ll have trouble remembering what about the artists is fact and what I have read in fiction. That’s fine with me though! This novel focuses on Fra Filippo, a monk/artist in the Italian town of Prato, and Lucrezia Buto, a merchant’s daughter who is sent to the convent in Prato after her father’s death. Fra Filippo meets Lucrezia and uses her as a model for the Madonna in one of his paintings. Lucrezia is caught between her desire to be a good person and longings for the secular life. Both she and Fra Filippo are manipulated by many people who are motivated by greed, lust, and fear as much as they are by a desire to be close to God. I enjoyed the novel as a quick read but if you are specifically looking for something about this time period I’d recommend The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease, or The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.… (mehr)

Prato, Italy 1456. Twenty year old Lucrezia Buti arrives at the Convent Santa Margherita, along with her younger sister, Spinetta. The sisters lives have completely changed since the death of their father, a successful cloth merchant. They find themselves suddenly destitute, with no choice but to enter the convent. For Spinetta, who was always promised to the church, the transition is not difficult. But this is not the case for her beautiful sister. Lucrezia's future husband had been selected, she was planning to be married. With the sudden lack of a dowry all her plans are destroyed and she feels the loss keenly. She is not comfortable with the stark life of a nun, though she tries her best to adjust to the life fate has chosen for her.

Fate is still at work, though. Renowned but dissolute painter Filippo Lippi has been given the job of chaplain at Santa Margherita by his patrons, the powerful Medicis. He is at a low point, lacking inspiration, when he suddenly meets Lucrezia and her beauty inspires both his painting and his heart. Lucrezia is drawn to him in return, though any relationship between a monk and a novice nun is of course completely forbidden.

Beauty can be a blessing and a curse, as Lucrezia discovers when the powerful Prior General begins to force himself upon her. In desperation, she uses the uproar on the day of The Feast of the Sacred Belt to escape the convent and hide in the house of a wealthy family. But she meets Lippi on the way and ends up taking refuge in his home, instead. When the worst happens anyway, Lippi is willing to give up everything to protect her and keep her from further harm.

Human nature never changes, that is what makes stories like this one resonate down through the years. Don't we always want most what we can't have? Centuries have gone by and this still remains true. And there will always be those who can't resist greed, self importance, power...the villains then are not so very different from the villains now. This is the aspect of historical fiction that I most enjoy, that a dusty old story that has had the personality and emotion eroded from it by time can be renewed and made relevant by the imagination of an author (or authors, in this case). Now I wish I'd paid more attention in the single art history class I took in college...I remember it being boring, boring, boring. Too bad the professor didn't have a little of the talent of these authors, if he had added the stories behind the paintings...well, who knows where I'd be now! If you enjoy historical fiction you'll definitely want to read The Miracles of Prato !… (mehr)