The Beauty and the Terror

The Italian Renaissance shaped Western culture - but it was far stranger and darker than many of us realise.

Brilliant and gripping, here is the full true Renaissance in a history of compelling originality and freshness Simon Sebag Montefiore

We know the Mona Lisa for her smile, but not that she was married to a slave-trader. We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his art, but few now appreciate his ingenious designs for weaponry. We visit Florence to see Michelangelos David, but hear nothing of the massacre that forced the republics surrender. In fact, many of the Renaissances most celebrated artists and thinkers emerged not during the celebrated rebirth of the fifteenth century but amidst the death and destruction of the sixteenth century.

The Beauty and the Terror is an enrapturing narrative which includes the forgotten women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who lived the Renaissance every day. Brimming with life, it takes us closer than ever before to the reality of this astonishing era, and its meaning for today.

Terrifying and fascinatingSunday Times

Enlightening...exactly the alternative history you might wish forDaily Telegraph