Lucrezia Borgia : Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy

Sarah Bradford
Penguin Publishing Group
9780143035954
0-14-303595-9

The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance--incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs..

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Yet, as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day.Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create.