![]() ![]() Enter Leonardo, who plots the found body parts on a map of Imola, the city in which the gruesome murders occurred, and discovers that the points correspond to those consistent with an Archimedean spiral. If political intrigue is not enough, there have also recently been some serial killings in which the victims were dismembered and decapitated. (Perhaps it’s not necessary to mention that these are all Borgias, so in Renaissance Italy, raw displays of power are as common as segreto sauce.) Damiata is one of the “cortigiane oneste” or “honest courtesans”-or even more colloquially, a whore with the proverbial heart of gold. The first narrator in this labyrinthine tale is Damiata, whose son is kidnapped by his grandfather, the pope, in a raw display of power and privilege. ![]() ![]() In this epic novel, Ennis gives ample evidence that political and religious corruption in early-16th-century Italy makes anything vaguely analogous look like Sunnybrook Farm.Īt the center of this swirling unscrupulousness are several key historical figures, most notably the ruthless Duke Valentino of Romagna his equally merciless father, Pope Alexander VI a brilliant military engineer and draftsman named Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, who bases his political theory of power on the machinations of the aforementioned duke. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |