Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: I am Venus Author:  Barbara Mujica ISBN: 978-1-4683-0657-6 Publisher: The Overlook Press Type of book: 1619-1660, Spain, Golden Age, Royalty, Art, wars, countryside, city, court Year it was published: 2013 Summary: (from tlc.com) I Am Venus chronicles the relationship between the great Baroque Spanish painter Diego Velázquez and the woman who became his Venus. Author Bárbara Mujica vividly reimagines the great artist’s rise to prominence, set against the backdrop of political turmoil and romantic scandal. Narrated by the mysterious model who posed for Velázquez’s only female nude, “The Rokeby of Venus,” I Am Venus is a seductive historical novel of the love between an artist and his muse. The year is 1619, and Diego Velazquez is a rising star at an art academy in Seville run by his father-in-law. But even as his young wife builds him a family, the painter finds himself yearning for a larger canvas, and soon his ambition lands him at the court o...