Leonardo's Swans

With her pretty face and pretty manners, Isabella doesn't envy her tomboyish sister, Beatrice, until she meets Beatrice's cultured, debonair betrothed, Ludovico. Despite her own happy marriage, Isabella carries on a shameless flirtation with Ludovico, patron to genius Leonardo da Vinci. Kathe Mazur adds just the right spices of innuendo and intrigue to the Italian court of the fifteenth century, affirming it as a "snake pit of contrivances." With only slight vocal changes, Mazur reveals a mountain of hidden political agendas, and her reading of Leonardo's journals is especially vivid. She convinces listeners of Isabella's obsession to have da Vinci paint her portrait, whatever the cost, although in reality neither sister was immortalized by the Master. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

September 19, 2005
Sexual and political intrigue drive Essex's intricate novel (after previous historicals Kleopatra
and Pharaoh
) starring 15th-century Italian sisters Isabella and Beatrice d'Este. Isabella, the elder, more accomplished sister, is engaged to handsome Francesco Gonzaga, a minor aristocrat, while Beatrice is intended for the future duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, who's powerful, unscrupulous and already in possession of a pregnant mistress. It seems, at first, that Isabella will enjoy domesticity with Francesco, while unhappy Beatrice is useful to her husband only as a vehicle for breeding sons—a situation further complicated by Ludovico's infatuation with the more beautiful Isabella. While Isabella encourages her brother-in-law's overtures, she's actually desperate to sit for his resident artist, Leonardo da Vinci. The sisters' sexual rivalry provides the main fodder for the novel's first half; the less compelling remainder is taken up with the political complexities of Renaissance Italy, as the rulers of France scheme to invade Italy, Francesco schemes against Ludovico, and Ludovico schemes against everyone. Essex's canvas is too finely detailed to adequately represent the epic dramas of warring Italian princes, and occasional anachronisms in diction are distracting. But the stories of Isabella and Beatrice d'Este along with the occasional investigations of Leonardo's artworks, methods and personality are always engrossing.

These swans are both avian and metaphorically feminine. The two protagonists are the Este sisters of Ferrara, Italy, in the fifteenth century. They both marry young and well. Elizabeth Sastre does not particularly differentiate the voices of the characters, so often it is hard to know who is speaking, especially in dialogue between the sisters. This problem mars the plot only minimally because the portrayal of the two noble houses searching for power and beauty involves many historical events and personages of the Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci. There is much art described and discussed in this novel. Perhaps it would be best listened to with an art history at one's side. B.H.B. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine