Praise was justly lavished on her blond hair, white teeth and well-proportioned breasts. Lucrezia Borgia by Sara Bradford is an extremely well documented history of that period in Italian history using numerous personal letters as its basis. Unlike many another Renaissance princess, she genuinely was as attractive as her courtly flatterers claimed. The Pope's second and favourite daughter, Lucrezia, both inherited and rewarded this Italianate passion for la bella jgura. Delighting in beauty, he filled his palaces with handsome indicators of his status as a Renaissance achiever - tapestries, marbles, frescoes and jewellery. The companion work to her superb Lucrezia Borgia, Bradfords exploration of the life of Lucrezias highly controversial brother offers an insightful look.

Rodrigo, as Pope Alexander VI, was less interested in planting the cross among the heathens than in promoting the clan he had increased by fathering eight children. His astute young nephew Rodrigo, made cardinal in his turn when barely out of his teens, secured St Peter's chair for himself in 1492, the year in which his fellow Spaniards followed Columbus to the New World and wrested the kingdom of Granada from the Moors. Their roots lay in the Spanish province of Valencia, from where Cardinal Alonzo de Borja had migrated to Rome, eventually being raised to the papacy in 1455 as Calixtus III. Yet, as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford. dj in protective sleeve with signed first edition wrap strip. ONE SIMPLE FACT worth remembering about the Borgias is that they were not Italian, only pretending to be, but that, like so many impostors, they did it much better than the genuine article. life, love and death in renaissance italy.

Lucrezia Borgia by Sarah Bradford