Botticelli's Muse

"Sensuous and provocative as well as mysterious, Blume's interpretation of master painter Sandro Botticelli is at once a florid love story and a chilling political drama."--Publisher's Weekly.

Botticelli's Muse is an historical novel about a love quadrangle: Botticelli's troubled life as he is forced to choose among his three loves: art, romance, and prestige.

In 1477, Botticelli is suddenly fired by his prestigious patron and friend Lorenzo de' Medici. In the villa of his irritating new patron, the artist's creative well runs dry--until the day he sees Floriana, a Jewish weaver imprisoned in his sister's convent. But events threaten to keep his unlikely muse out of reach. So begins a tale of one of the art world's most beloved paintings, La Primavera, as Sandro, a confirmed bachelor, and Floriana, a headstrong artist in her own right, enter into a turbulent relationship.

Book One: BOTTICELLI'S MUSE

About the Author
Blume, Dorah: - An Italophile since the age of nineteen when she studied painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, Dorah Blume has published short fiction and nonfiction in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Hunger for Learning. Considering herself a late bloomer, she expanded her artistic reach from visual to the written word in her forties with an MFA in creative writing from Emerson, and has navigated between the two ever since. As a certified Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) facilitator, Dorah has led Juiceboxartists writing workshops for adults in Greater Boston as well as in Tuscany, and will soon offer online writing workshops. She divides her time between Boston and Los Angeles with frequent trips to Italy. If she could possess one superpower, it would be to understand and speak every language on the planet.Bluestein, Deborah: - A visual artist from the age of five, Ms. Bluestein has been a painter, print maker, cabinet maker, and graphic artist for decades. Most recently turning to book illustration, she employs a combination of abstract zentangles with realistic subject matter. The line drawings sprinkled throughout Botticelli's Muse are meant to give the reader a window into the plants, animals, and characters in the novel, while echoing a tradition of the illuminated manuscript.