Costanza

Resumen del libro

Rome 1636: Costanza Piccolomini is trying to be a good wife and a respectable young woman, while secretly wishing there's more to life than being dutiful. When she meets Lorenzo Bernini, the famous sculptor who reigns over Roman society, the two feel a mutual attraction that deepens into a passionate love affair, as Bernini introduces Costanza to art, sex and luxury. She embraces her new, more comfortable life as his mistress as he becomes her teacher, too, but their love is a dangerous one - not only because infidelity is illegal, but because the hot-tempered Bernini has darker desires: he wants to possess Costanza not just in life but also in sculpture. Inspired by his lover, Lorenzo creates the first statue of a (non-aristocratic) mortal woman for hundreds of years, changing European art history forever. But in shaping and revealing Costanza in stone, she is fully exposed as his lover, and it marks the beginning of the end for their affair; and Costanza's freedom. When his jealous brother Luigi wants Costanza for himself and threatens her life, it sparks a bitter fallout that costs Costanza everything. Cast out from society and thrown into a nunnery, she must rely on the friendship of her fellow 'fallen women' to gather her strength, recover her spirit, and learn to thrive again.