("V for Vendetta", "Chiaroscuro")

[fiefoe]

V is a far more expressive letter than I expected. Alan Moore & David Lloyd managed to begin all the chapter titles with it, and had to resort to a non-English word only once: V for 'Verwirrung', or 'bafflement'.

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Do we really want to know much about the "Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci" (by P McGreal, D Rawson, C Truog, R Kayanan)? In the end, it was Alisa Kwitney's foreword that decided for me. But stylin' hats and historical verisimilitude are not enough to overcome the unappealing characters. (Which is also my problem with the Moore book.)

• "How could I know that the core of my glittering new universe was as hollow as the empty, propped-up suits of armor that glinted in the cold January sun?"
• "You and my father think you have him all to yourselves, don't you, Botticelli?" {'Him' is a Medici, of course.}
• "Besides, how could heaven refuse a creation of mine?"
• "Crazy Catherine, you are my sanity. I do not know what I will do when you finally die."
  

Ovid: "Helen, when she looked in her mirror, and saw there the wrinkles of old age, wept, and wondered that she had twice been carried away."