The Historical Context of Gregory Maguire's Snow White Tale

Montefiore

​From the arable river lands to the south, the approach to Montefiore appears a sequence of relaxed hills. In the late spring, when the puckers of red poppy blossom are scattered against the green of the season, it can look like so much washing, like mounds of Persian silk and Florentine brocade lightly tossed in heaps. Each successive rise takes on a new color, indefinably more fervent, an aspect of distance and time stained by the shadows of clouds, or bleached when the sun takes a certain position.
But the traveler on foot or in a hobble-wheeled peasant cart, or even on horseback, learns he truth of the terrain. The ascent is steeper than it looks from below. And the rutted track traverses in long switchbacks to accommodate for the severity of the grade and the crosscutting ravines. So the trip takes many more hours than the view suggests. The red-tiled roofs of Montefiore come into sight, promisingly, and then disappear again as hills loom up and forests close in.
 - opening lines to "The roofs of Montefiore", ​Mirror, Mirror

Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo

The History of the True Cross

To the north of Montefiore is the city of Arezzo, where Vicente de Nevada is described as visiting the San Francesco monastery and contemplating a series of frescos upon its walls, painted by Piero della Francesca (“The vision in San Francesco”). This fresco sequence, known as The History of the True Cross or The Legend of the True Cross, is considered to be a masterwork of the Italian Early Renaissance period. You can find an interactive 3D model of the frescoes here. As you read Maguire's description of the images depicted upon the walls of San Francesco, you can browse those images for yourself.

The House of Borgia