Phoenixes and sphinxes: Renaissance ladies in poetry, paintings and life. Bagdasarova S.A.

Love, lust, painting of the Italian Renaissance, luttial music, death and violence, sonnets and poems, prayers and fears - this is what the life of outstanding women from the book of Sophia Baghdasarova was filled. Some of them were the model of painters and muses of poets, others themselves wrote poems and paintings. They look at us from Botticelli's paintings, Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, and their barely distinguishable voices sound for us thanks to the early printed books of the XV-XVI centuries, where their poems are published. The novels presented in this book reconstruct the history of their life for us, talking about the inspiration that they gave birth to men, and the right to creativity and freedom, for which these women fought themselves.

The text of this peculiar historical novel with fifteen heroines, interconnected by family and cultural ties, is abundantly supplemented by works of the Renaissance art. They are accompanied by voluminous art history comment. Thanks to this combination, the figures of the characters of the book become even more fascinating, and the history of the art of the Renaissance is more human and clearer.