The painting Allegory with Venus and Cupid has long fascinated visitors to London’s National Gallery, as well as the millions more who have seen it reproduced in books. It is one of the most beautiful paintings of the nude ever made. In 1544, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence commissioned the artist Bronzino to create the painting to be sent as a diplomatic gift to King FranƯcois I of France. As well as the academic mystery of what the strange figures in the painting represent, there is a human mystery: who were the models in the Florence of 1544 who posed for the gods and strange creatures? Alan Fisk’s Cupid and the Silent Goddess imagines how the creation of this painting might have touched the lives of everyone who was involved with it: Bronzino’s apprentice Giuseppe, the mute and mysterious Angelina who is forced to model for Venus, the brutal sculptor Baccio Bandinelli and his son, and the good-hearted nun Sister Benedicta and her friend the old English priest Father Fleccia, both secret practitioners of alchemy. As the painting takes shape, it causes episodes of fear and cruelty, but the ending lies perhaps in the gift of Venus.