Best books… Sarah Dunant
The novelist, critic and broadcaster Sarah Dunant picks her favourite books on Renaissance Italy. Her latest novel, In the Name of the Family, about the Borgia clan, is published by Virago at £16.99
Nuns Behaving Badly by Craig A. Monson, 2010 (University of Chicago Press £15). When Monson, a musicologist, goes awol in the Vatican archives, the result is a mouthwatering account of misbehaviour behind convent walls. Witchcraft, arson and illicit trips to the opera with the local priest; Monson’s sleuthing shows just how much history is still to be discovered. April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici by Lauro Martines, 2003 (Vintage £11.99). In 1478, a plot to murder Lorenzo de’ Medici dramatically misfired. The Pazzi conspiracy left Lorenzo’s brother dead and sent shock waves through Italy.
In this masterful retelling, Martines reminds us that while we may swoon over its beauty, Renaissance Italy was a bloody, brutal place.
The Cardinal’s Hat by Mary Hollingsworth, 2004 (out of print). Cardinal Ippolito d’este (son of Lucrezia Borgia) was the model of a Renaissance cleric: worldly, wealthy and good at splashing it around. This enchanting book uses the driest of material – his household accounts – to bring him alive: from his crystal chamber pots to the number of eggs consumed on a trip to France.
Machiavelli in Love by Guido Ruggiero, 2007 (John Hopkins £13). This accessible
collection of essays places Machiavelli inside his larger culture (much bawdier and sexually fluid than you might imagine), and teases out the mischief and the mix of romanticism and cynicism in this fertile period of history.
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley, 2015 (Simon & Schuster £13). A rollercoaster romp about the thriving trade in holy relics in the 16th century. The novel’s hero finds himself embroiled in a plot to substitute the Turin shroud with one mocked up by his mate Albrecht Dürer. Witty and absurd in equal parts; a light touch on the heavy topic of how you can fool many of the people much of the time.