Books in Brief
March 13, 2023
Knots, or the Violence of Desire in Renaissance Florence
Author: Emanuele Lugli
Via The University of Chicago Press
![The cover of the book Knots, or the Violence of Desire in Renaissance Florence and a photo of the author, Emanuele Lugli](/sites/default/files/styles/embed_350w_medium_1x/public/Lugli_knots.jpg?itok=2qQXyCLY)
“In this innovative cultural history, hair is the portal through which Emanuele Lugli accesses the cultural production of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s Florence. Lugli reflects on the ways writers, doctors, and artists expressed religious prejudices, health beliefs, and gender and class subjugation through alluring works of art, in medical and political writings, and in poetry. He considers what may have compelled Sandro Botticelli, the young Leonardo da Vinci, and dozens of their contemporaries to obsess over braids, knots, and hairdos by examining their engagement with scientific, philosophical, and theological practices.”