Active between 1930 and 1986, Maria Bellonci was a writer who met with considerable commercial success and was also the recipient of several literary prizes, including the coveted Premio Strega in 1985. Although she was fully aware of various trends in Italian literary life, she chose to follow her own path and fashioned a fictional form akin to the historical novel that might be called "document-based fiction." While scrupulously based on archival research, the books succeed as fiction because of Bellonci's deep understanding of her characters and her sensitivity to the flavor and atmosphere of the times in which they lived.

The historical period favored by Bellonci was the Italian Renaissance. She focused on the events, places, and characters of a society that is traditionally associated with the modern concept of political power and its penetration in all aspects of life. Her sight fixed on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, she...