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Lead book review

How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene

Evil figures may lurk in your arty Christmas cards, as Alexander Lee's The Ugly Renaissance shows

19 October 2013

9:00 AM

19 October 2013

9:00 AM

The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Disease and Excess in an Age of Beauty Alexander Lee

Hutchinson, pp.592, £25

In the vast Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore between Siena and Rome, the cycle of frescoes depicting the life of St Benedict by Giovanni Anionio Bazzi includes a charming self-portrait of the artist standing with a couple of pets at his feet, for all the world a 16th-century Italian Dorothy with a brace of Totos.

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