The Maiden of Florence is a gorgeous book in so many ways, from its beautiful cover to descriptions so vivid you feel you are right in the scene with the characters, living within the story. It is also profoundly moving. Based on true events, it recounts the story of Giulia Albizzi in the late 16th and early 17th century in Florence and Venice. The novel plunges the reader into Giulia’s life right from the raw, shocking and disturbing opening paragraph.
“My defloration was talked about in all the courts of Europe. My hymen, which the Prioress in Florence had urged me to dedicate to a holy bridegroom, was peered at by men, prodded, tested, certified, then overthrown, its bloody extinction observed and written of from Venice to Florence, to Mantua, to Ferrara, to Rome. The Prince boasted of his prowess, of the number of times he had had me, even as preparations were being made for his wedding, as boldly as if he had ridden across the causeway to his Mantuan palace with the bloodstained sheet tied to his lance.”
The Maiden of Florence, Katherine Mezzacappa
Giulia was an innocent, pious girl raised from a very early age in the very sheltered environment of the Florence Innocenti and Pietà orphanages. A lonely child, craving affection, in 1584 she was taken into the care of a Medici minister, Belisario Vinta. He had been tasked by Francesco, Grand Duke of Florence, with finding a girl and overseeing a plan to prove that Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua was capable of deflowering a virgin before he is married into the powerful de Medici family in Florence. In return, Giulia will receive a generous dowry and Vinta will find her a husband.
All of this is solidly based on contemporary documents, clearly meticulously researched.
The first third of the book describes, often in vivid detail, the events before, during and after Giulia’s ‘deflowering’. A pretty word for rape. She is sexually assaulted multiple times, by the Prince and by Vinta. She is forced to submit to the humiliation of intimate physical examinations before several observers. There is nothing gratuitous about these raw evocations. Instead, they force the reader to face the horror of her ordeals without masking them behind a veneer of euphemism or evasion.
The rest of the book is fiction, imagining Giulia’s life: her marriage to Giuliano Sperati, a musician for the Grand Duke, the birth of and her life with her children, and her encounters with key figures from her ordeal some 30 years later.
I love historical novels that bring to light the experiences of real women from the distant past, bringing them back to life, giving them a voice and thus empowering them. But The Maiden of Florence is much more than this. It is an insightful portrayal, giving voice to the millions upon millions upon millions of women who have suffered sexual assault. Women who have never been capable of or had the opportunity to put words on their experience. It throws light on the physical and emotional complexity of sexual assault.
Giulia is terrified, but also seduced by the pleasure of being treated as special and important by the servants and others around her. In the orphanage she was nobody. Now, we see how confusing it is for her to be at once valued and treated as a worthless pawn at the mercy of powerful people. Gifts, attention and even affection, mixed with violence and coercion, have always been the tools used by sexual abusers to confound, destabilise and control their victims. After the first time, Giulia experiences physical pleasure with the Prince and even feels love for him — something that many women may experience and that can cause profound, lifelong confusion, shame and guilt.
The Maiden of Florence would be an unbearable read had Mezzacappa not chosen to portray Giulia’s later life as encompassing much love and joy as well as sorrow.
This is the first book by Katherine Mezzacappa that I have read. (She also writes under the names Katie Hutton and Kate Zarrelli.) It will not be the last. She is an astonishingly good writer. The story is narrated by Giulia and later by her husband Giuliano, in simple, flowing, beautiful prose. I could have kept reading it forever…
Finally, I loved the cover, designed by Holly Ovenden. Beautiful.
My thanks to Katherine Mezzacappa for giving me a review copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.
If you like this, you’ll also enjoy:
The Book of Secrets – Anna Mazzola
The Ballad of Mary Kearney – Katherine Mezzacappa