The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece-Fast Shipping

Description

Told with consummate skill by the writer of the bestselling, award-winning A Civil Action, The Lost Painting is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story.

An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facingthe sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archiveunknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti,makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value,a painting lost for almost two centuries.

The artist was Caravaggio, a master ofthe Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset bypersonal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns andstreets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and outof jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn’t alter his violent rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted died young, alone, and under strange circumstances.

Caravaggio scholars estimatethat between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others–noone knows the precise number–have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiecelies forgotten in a storeroom, or in a small parish church, or hanging above a fireplace,mistaken for a mere copy.

Prizewinning author Jonathan Harr embarks on an spellbindingjourney to discover the long-lost painting known as The Taking of Christ–its mysteriousfate and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated Caravaggio devoteesfor years. After Francesca Cappelletti stumbles across a clue in that dusty archive,she tracks the painting across a continent and hundreds of years of history. Butit is not until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, thatshe finally manages to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle.

Praise for The Lost Painting

“Jonathan Harr has gone to the troubleof writing what will probably be a bestseller . . . rich and wonderful. . . . In truth,the book reads better than a thriller. .. . If you’re a sucker for Rome, and for dusk . . . [you’ll] enjoy Harr’s more clearlyreported details about life in the city.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lostpainting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste—andabout the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fallprey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could everhope to read.”
—The Economist