Florence, 1584. Rumours are spreading about the virility of a prince marrying into the powerful Medici family. Orphan Giulia is chosen to put an end to the gossip. In return she will keep her life - and start a new one with a dowry and her own husband. Cloistered since childhood and an innocent in a world ruled by men, Giulia reluctantly agrees, only to be drawn under the control of the Medicis' lecherous minister.
I am pleased to welcome author Katherine Mezzacappa to The Writing Desk:
Fairlight published The Maiden of Florence in April 2024. It’s based on the true story of a young woman, Giulia Albizzi, taken from a Dominican-run orphanage in Florence in 1584 to act as a proof of virility for Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir to the dukedom of Mantua, before he could contract a dynastic marriage with his cousin Eleonora de’ Medici.
The former orphanage of the Pietà, where Giulia was brought up,
now the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Via Giusti, Florence.
His first marriage, to a Farnese princess, was annulled due to a malformation of the bride. Eleonora’s stepmother, who bore a grudge against the Gonzagas, insisted on proof that the problem didn’t lie with Vincenzo. Giulia would be provided with a husband and a generous dowry. She was taken to Venice incognito and the deed was witnessed by the Medici minister, Belisario Vinta. Thereafter Giulia disappears from record. I tell that story, from her point of view, and follow it with an imagined account of her marriage.
The heart of Vincenzo Gonzaga’s dukedom: Mantua.
What is your preferred writing routine?
I start the weekday with London Writers Hour at 9 my time. At 10 I go to work (I have a job as a management consultant, though it’s now part-time to make way for writing). In the afternoons I write, I go back to work in the evenings and then write again into the night, and at weekends.
What advice do you have for new writers?
What advice do you have for new writers?
Read widely but well. Put simply, if you read garbage then you are more likely to produce it. Remember that writing is a habit, not a hobby. Do it daily; don’t wait for ‘the right moment’ as that is now. Don’t worry about how good your writing is on any day, as you can go back and revise tomorrow. You’ll never be able to revise a blank page.
I would also say don’t give up, and don’t chuck anything out. My next novel is The Ballad of Mary Kearney, set in 18c Ireland. It will be published by Histria Fiction in January 2025, but was written for the most part in 2016, before any of my other novels (five full-length and three novellas) that have been published since. I thought it had something, despite the rejections it was getting, though with experience over time I could see why it wasn’t landing. Several revisions later, it found the right home.
As a new writer, seek the solidarity of other writers, whether that’s in a writing group, people you have met on a writing course or through a professional writers’ organisation. Find your tribe.
What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?
I would also say don’t give up, and don’t chuck anything out. My next novel is The Ballad of Mary Kearney, set in 18c Ireland. It will be published by Histria Fiction in January 2025, but was written for the most part in 2016, before any of my other novels (five full-length and three novellas) that have been published since. I thought it had something, despite the rejections it was getting, though with experience over time I could see why it wasn’t landing. Several revisions later, it found the right home.
As a new writer, seek the solidarity of other writers, whether that’s in a writing group, people you have met on a writing course or through a professional writers’ organisation. Find your tribe.
What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?
I don’t think I’m that good at it, to be honest, which is one of the reasons why I am grateful for being traditionally published. Getting my first novel (one of those I wrote as Katie Hutton) published in 2020 wasn’t ideal timing; I didn’t get to do any author events until late 2022 though I had three books out by then. I do some of the basics, like blog tours, which I don’t think have a vast impact on sales but immediately increase Google footprint.
I network, notably through the Historical Novel Society (I am lead organiser for the 2026 conference), review and do book and festival events (and post about them) and I look for endorsements. I am grateful for Kate Quinn’s, which she offered without being asked and which will appear on the paperback edition of The Maiden of Florence. There’s not one magic wand. Tony manages this much better than I am, so I am thankful for opportunities like this blog.
Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research.
Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research.
I don’t know if this wholly unexpected so much as was the extent to which young women were directed into convents in Renaissance Florence (a nun’s dowry being considerably smaller than that expected by a prospective husband). Orphanages were also run under religious rules; the surprise was how many there were, with hundreds of infants being abandoned every year. Their inmates worked unpaid, mainly for the Silk Guild. More recent parallels would be with the Magdalen laundries.
What was the hardest scene you remember writing?
What was the hardest scene you remember writing?
It’s where Giulia is interrogated (there isn’t really a more apt word for it) after the event. It’s based closely on the correspondence in the Medici archive, and it’s one of the few times that we hear Giulia’s voice in the correspondence, as distinct from Belisario Vinta’s, writing things about her. Vinta is both relentless, and explicit in his questions.
He asks things like ‘how many times?’ ‘Did he use any instrument else other than his person?’ ‘When you were crying was it for shame or because he was hurting you?’ He asks his questions repeatedly. Eventually Giulia cries out and tries to hide her face. This happened in 1584, but in its substance probably differs little from what survivors of sexual assault are subjected to now.
Giulia has served her purpose: the marriage of Eleonora de’ Medici
and Vincenzo Gonzaga, 1584.
What are you planning to write next?
I am working on two projects. One is the first of a crime series (a new genre for me) set in Italy in the late 15c and featuring a Salerno-trained physician and reluctant detective. The other is set near Edinburgh in the 1920s. It grew out of a memory an elderly man told me of the people in the ‘big house’ in his village who lost their only son to the trenches. He’d fathered a little boy with a local girl but the young man’s parents steadfastly wanted nothing to do with their grandson.
Katherine Mezzacappa
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About the Author
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