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The Beauty Part
'The da Vinci Code' of art--that's the shorthand for Jonathan Harr's book.
It's certainly a convenient way to summarize 'The Lost Painting' and amp up the excitement. Consider the painter. Caravaggio has become the favorite bad boy of the Italian Baroque--passionate, combative, probably gay, a murderer, and, along the way, an artist who painted masterpiece after masterpiece and then did his legend a favor by dying young.
And consider the paintings: images ripped from the movies, all gloss and shadow, usually with only a single light source to highlight the dirty faces of extreme personalities seen in extremis.
And then consider the painting: The Taking of Christ. One of only 80--or maybe 60--on the planet. Worth $50 million. If, that is, it were on the market. If, that is, anyone knew where it was.
That's the engine of this book, the first by Harr since his best-selling legal chronicle, 'A Civil Action.' 'The Taking of Christ' is the Grail of Caravaggio scholars. There are copies, but the original disappeared 200 years ago. Can anyone find it? The answer is: Yes. 'How' is answered in the brisk 290 pages of The Lost Painting.
It's certainly a convenient way to summarize 'The Lost Painting' and amp up the excitement. Consider the painter. Caravaggio has become the favorite bad boy of the Italian Baroque--passionate, combative, probably gay, a murderer, and, along the way, an artist who painted masterpiece after masterpiece and then did his legend a favor by dying young.
And consider the paintings: images ripped from the movies, all gloss and shadow, usually with only a single light source to highlight the dirty faces of extreme personalities seen in extremis.
And then consider the painting: The Taking of Christ. One of only 80--or maybe 60--on the planet. Worth $50 million. If, that is, it were on the market. If, that is, anyone knew where it was.
That's the engine of this book, the first by Harr since his best-selling legal chronicle, 'A Civil Action.' 'The Taking of Christ' is the Grail of Caravaggio scholars. There are copies, but the original disappeared 200 years ago. Can anyone find it? The answer is: Yes. 'How' is answered in the brisk 290 pages of The Lost Painting.
