Blood & Beauty: A Novel of The Borgias by Sarah Dunant

From its creamy black cover, gold detailing and red edged pages everything about this beautiful hardback edition of Sarah Dunant’s Blood & Beauty oozes the word “luxury”.

The spoils continue on delicately turning the first page as Sarah Dunant invites you to
watch the unfolding exploits of the most infamous family of Renaissance Italy.

   

15^th century Rome is a cesspit of corruption. In the unrelenting heat fat cardinals yawn from their windows and look on while sheep eat grass growing in the ruins of a once great city. Inside the Vatican those in power scheme and manoeuvre for more power and many abandon the chaste route carved out for them by the church.
 

Yet despite derelict buildings and straying away from God’s will, Rome is still the centre of Christendom and holds the power in making or breaking kingdoms.

For one man this neglected fruit lies idle and ripe for plucking…

Sixty-one years old and with a budding young family of three sons and one cherished daughter, Rodrigo Borgia is to be become history’s most controversial pope: Alexander VI. 

His reign will be one to set tongues wagging in even in the poorest backstreets of the papal city; a reign marked by ambition, plots and above all family loyalties.

Detailing Alexander VI's life from his elevation in 1492, to his daughter’s second marriage, Sarah Dunant takes a career already possessed with the power to jump out of the page and places you, the reader, amongst the action.

Surrender yourself freely to Dunant’s vivid narration and rich vocabulary and you will find
yourself breathing in the stale air of the Sistine Chapel during the papal conclave, watching the amber glow of candles flicker over Pinturicchio paintings in the Room of Mysteries and hearing the clatter of plates as Alexander VI’s fist meets the dinner table in stark disapproval. 

The novel offers a refreshing take on a familiar historical cast. The figures are imbued a humanity that is enjoyable in its dimensions and offers a different slant to the cruel and villainous Alexander VI, whose weaknesses and motivations are exposed by Dunant. The character list also includes the naive and much doted on Lucrezia, who endures the pains of an unhappy first marriage, and the Pope’s handsome and politically astute eldest son, Cesare.    

Blood & Beauty is historical fiction at its finest with each point eloquently depicted right down to the tinniest of brushstrokes. Enjoy the Renaissance frescoes beautifully painted by Sarah Dunant, the lace of Lucrezia Borgia’s bridal gown as she walks the portico in front of a gathering crowd and the war cries of soldiers marching across the Mediterranean landscape.

In recent times the trend has been to sex up history in fiction and the Borgias have been no exception. The family have been treated to modern revamp with the 2011 television series starring Jeremy Irons, a series with great cinematography and grand costumes and scenery that falls short at times on the facts side. 

Sarah Dunant’s main achievement in Beauty & Blood is to deliver all the romantic and action packed elements of the Borgias’ story but remaining true to the captivating and undiluted authority of history itself.