The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.48 (760 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0375759867 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-17 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
He also discusses various forensic approaches, including X ray, infrared reflectography, chemical analysis of the paints and canvas, and other modern techniques. Mercurial, supremely gifted, and prone to violence, Caravaggio lived like an outlaw and a pauper most of his troubled life. But most of the book is focused on more primitive methods, including dogged research through dusty archives and meticulous attention to detail. Though he does not provide an in-depth examination of the painting itself--the book is not aimed specifically at art experts--Harr does include many details for lay readers about restoration, the various methods used to track artwork through history, how originals are distinguished from copies, and an inside view of the art world, past and present. Harr does an admirable job of bringing the man alive in these pages while keeping his lo
Bucherwurm said At First Annoying and Then Enchanting. I really love history, and especially art history. A book about the finding of the long lost Caravaggio painting "The Taking of Christ" got me really excited. Then I started reading it. Evidently authors like Mr. Harr feel that most people won't pick up a book that is not fiction so he writes in a way that gives new meaning to the term "narrative history". At first he seems to want. "Caravaggio, lost and recoverrd in your eyes" according to david maniowicz. I enjoyed this book a lot. A good story and real facts to understand how famous paintings get to a museum. The world of caravaggio and Rome in the XVII century at your fingertips. An ideal tale for an e-book as you can easely link to each painting and check its details in real time. I also navigated to each place mentioned in the book linking to google maps, wikipedia, you tube, et. "Why is this a novel?" according to baobab. I enjoy art history, and the depiction of how modern scholars determine attribution of old paintings is interesting, but I would have preferred a factual article, not a fictional account. I don't know how much, if anything in this book is based on reality. As fiction the book doesn't have that much going for it. There is very little character development and no particular drama or
Many others–no one knows the precise number–have been lost to time. 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. He almost never foreshadows, doesn't implausibly reconstruct entire conversations and rarely throws in litanies of clearly conjectured or imagined details just for color's sake .if you're a sucker for Rome, and for dusk .you'll enjoy Harr's more clearly reported details about life in the city, as when--one of my favorite moments in the whole book--Francesca and another young colleague try to calm their nerves before a crucial meeting with a forbidding professor by eating gelato. After Francesca Cappelletti stumbles across a clue in that dusty archive, she tracks the painting across a continent and hundreds of years of history. Harr’s account is not unlike a Caravaggio painting: vivid, deftly wrought, and enthralling."Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble of writing what will probably be a bestseller rich and wonderful truth, the book reads better than a thriller because, unlike a lot of best-selling nonfiction authors who write in a more or less novelistic vein (Harr's previous book, A Civil Action, was made into a John Travolta movie