Award-Winning Wall Street Journal bestselling author Kennedy Ryan launches a brand-new series with a Hollywood tale of wild ambition, artistic obsession, and unrelenting love.

One moment in the spotlight . . .

For months I stood by, an understudy waiting in the wings,

preparing for my time to shine.

I never imagined he would watch in the audience that night.

Canon Holt.

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Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence's art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city's powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that "divine" poet. This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious...

The Renaissance was a time of significant accomplishments in architecture, art, music, science and exploration. It began in the Italian city-states, with Florence generally described as the cradle of the Renaissance. Venice was a trading superpower with a large empire. The Catholic Church and Trade Unions were influential on society. Marriages strengthened business and family ties. A system of social welfare was created to help the poor, especially...

"Travel back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to the sounds of jazz in nightclubs and the 24-hours-a-day bustle of the famous Black neighborhood of Harlem in uptown Manhattan. It was a dazzling time when there was an outpouring of the arts of African Americans--the poetry of Langston Hughes, the novels of Zora Neale Hurston, the sculptures of Augusta Savage, and that brand-new music called jazz as only Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong could play it....

A brutal murder, a nefarious plot, a coded letter. After five hundred years, the most notorious mystery of the Renaissance is finally solved.

The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy’s many city-states providing the grist for Machiavelli’s classic work on take-no-prisoners politics, The Prince. The attempted assassination of the Medici...

"An examination of the development of the nude as an artistic motif in the visual culture of Renaissance Europe, 1400-1530"--Provided by publisher.

"A wide-ranging introduction to the way that art was made, valued, and viewed in northern Europe in the age of the Renaissance, from the late fourteenth to the early years of the sixteenth century. Drawing on a rich range of sources, from inventories and guild regulations to poetry and chronicles, Northern Renaissance Art examines everything from panel paintings and prints to metalwork and manuscripts. While many little-known works are highlighted,...

The effects of the Italian Renaissance are still with us today, from the incomparable paintings of Leonardo da Vinci to the immortal writings of Petrarch and Machiavelli. But why was there such an artistic, cultural, and intellectual explosion in Italy at the start of the 14th century? Why did it occur in Italy? And why in certain Italian city-states such as Florence? Professor Bartlett probes these questions and more in 36 dynamic lectures. This

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This is a timely, visual, exploration of the fascinating life and lasting legacy of sculptor Augusta Savage (1892-1962), who overcame poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination to become one of America's most influential twentieth-century artists. Her story is one of community-building, activism, and art education. Born just outside Jacksonville, Florida, Savage left the South to pursue new opportunities and opened a studio in Harlem, New York City,...