Dooley, B: Mattress Maker's Daughter The Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni de' Medici and Livia Vernazza

Once again, Brendan Dooley demonstrates his gift for showing how a minor, forgotten episode can illuminate processes of social and cultural change.
-- Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University
This exciting story of love flouting social convention becomes, in Dooley's meticulously researched and vividly rendered reconstruction, a window onto a wide swath of social history in early modern Genoa, Venice, and Florence-from the difficult life of a family of mattress makers, to the luxury, wars, suspicious deaths, and legal skullduggery which emanated from the Medici court in the age of Galileo.
-- Ann Blair, Harvard University
This is a deliciously erudite exploration of the intertwined lives of a bastard of the Medici who strove for a stable foothold in the family and of the ex-prostitute he struggled, ultimately in vain, to hoist into high society as his consort. Ranging across half a continent, the book meditates on war, politics, science, the plastic arts, poetry, self-knowledge, and the odd, sad accidents of love. It is great fun to read.
-- Thomas Cohen, York University, Canada