Florenzer by Phil Melanson

Publishes 2 July
 
Leonardo da Vinci, twelve years old and a bastard, leaves the Tuscan countryside to join his father in Florence with dreams of becoming a painter. Francesco Salviati, also a bastard and scorned for his too-dark skin, dedicates himself to the Catholic Church with grand hopes of salvation. Towering above them both is Lorenzo de’ Medici, barely a man, yet soon to be the patriarch of the world’s wealthiest and most influential bank. Each is, in his own way, a son of Florence. Each will, when their paths cross, shed blood on Florence’s streets.
 
Brash and breathtaking, this lush historical drama explores the dangerous pursuit of artistic and political achievement-especially at a time when “florenzers,” or gay men such as Leonardo, were often persecuted. Mining the origins of one of history’s finest artists and the city where he came of age, Florenzer introduces an enthralling new voice in fiction.
 
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'Introduces us to a teenage Leonardo still struggling to find himself amid the roiling artistic and political atmosphere of late-15th-century Florence . . . For a young man sexually attracted to other young men, this can be particularly dangerous . . . Yet his work may be his salvation.' - New York Times
 
'The novel, which owes a debt to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy in the detail and immediacy of its telling, feels freshly contemporary in its papal intrigue and plutocratic power battles’ - Washington Post
 
'A captivating portrait of an all-too-human genius – subtle, erudite and exquisitely sexy' - James Cahill, author of The Violet Hour