"Sensuous and provocative as well as mysterious.... Blume's interpretation of master painter Sandro Botticelli is at once a florid love story and a chilling political drama."--Publishers Weekly. Botticelli’s Muse peels back layers of history to tell a fictionalized version of the life of Sandro Botticelli, his conflicts with the Medici family of Florence, and the woman at the heart of his paintings. In 1477, Botticelli is suddenly fired by his prestigious patron and friend Lorenzo de’ Medici. In the villa of his irritating new patron, the artist’s creative well runs dry—until the day he sees Floriana, a Jewish weaver imprisoned in his sister’s convent. But events threaten to keep his unlikely muse out of reach. So begins a tale of one of the art world’s most beloved paintings, La Primavera, as Sandro, a confirmed bachelor, and Floriana, a headstrong artist in her own right, enter into a turbulent relationship.