"'Dunant throws out ideas about sex, art and the divine with Renaissance-style sprezzatura.' INDEPENDENT 'Dunant has created a vivid and compellingly believable picture of Renaissance Florence... her research has obviously been meticulous... a magnificent novel.' TELEGRAPH 'A beautiful serpent of a book, seductive dangerous and full of wise guile, the most brilliant novel yet from a writer of powerful historical imagination and wicked literary gifts.' SIMON SCHAMA"