Few people have heard of Astorre Manfredi. He nevertheless lived in one of the most exciting times in the history of the world, the Italian Renaissance, home to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Cellini, Cesare and his sister Lucretia Borgia, the children of the immensely powerful Pope Alexander VI, all of whom were known to Astorre, two of whom, Alexander VI and his son Cesare, murdered him. Astorre had been 17, his brother Gianevangelista 15, when their bodies were brought to the surface of the Tiber, both boys tied together at the neck, weighted by stones, along with the remains of young girls, as naked as the lads and ligated in the same fashion. Historian Johann Burchard dared write only, ''both boys had been participants in an orgy along with a large number of very young girls. A certain powerful person sated his lust on the boys.'' That powerful person was Alexander VI.Astorre died at an impossibly young age, when the world was his oyster, thanks to his intelligence, wealth and beauty. Artists all over Italy flocked to his door for the honor of doing a painting or sculpting his face in marble, this in an age of particularly beautiful boys and girls, whose blatant sexuality knew few limits.Hunched over, afraid of every storm, men at the time lived out their existence in pure terror and anonymity. There were no clocks, not even calendars among them, and the century in which they lived was both unknown and of no importance. Peasants passed their days in perpetual toil, seeking out the church at the time of baptisms, marriages and deaths, alongside priests as ignorant as they. Assassinations, cruelty beyond human understanding, plagues, poverty and disease that condemned generations to an early death--but also wealth beyond measure, palaces and the creation of art that attract thousands, daily today, into the heart of Rome and Florence, all familiar to Astorre Manfredi in what would become known as the Renaissance, all of which are the subjects of this book.