The beginning of the end... Within these pages are the adventures of five characters caught up in the politics, cruelty and violence of the early sixteenth century; woven together as their lives interact for good or evil. Two Florentine lovers are banished to Rome, only to fall victim to the Emperor's rebellious troops, raping and pillaging the Holy City. Two English knights, among the last of their kind, driven from their Crusader outpost by a Turkish army, are obliged to commit a terrible crime for the same Emperor in return for a new home on Malta. A Spanish mercenary captain, now become nobleman - honored for his deeds as a Conquistador in the New World - has accumulated one too many enemies for his own good. Through the cunning of Machiavelli, the intellect of Isabella d'Este and the alchemy of Paracelsus, these five will finally meet in a bloody and explosive climax beneath the walls of a Moorish castle in the Spanish desert. The Painter of Florence is a story of love, vengeance and redemption set against a beautiful but savage background. The twilight of the Renaissance.