{"product_id":"the-lost-painting-isbn-9780375759864","title":"The Lost Painting","description":"\u003cb\u003eTold with consummate skill by the writer of the bestselling, award-winning \u003ci\u003eA Civil Action\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Painting\u003c\/i\u003e is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing  the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive  unknown 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The artist was Caravaggio, a master of  the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by  personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and  streets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and out  of jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual power.  He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn’t alter his violent temperament.  His rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted man.  He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Caravaggio scholars estimate  that between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others–no  one knows the precise number–have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiece  lies forgotten in a storeroom, or in a small parish church, or hanging above a fireplace,  mistaken for a mere copy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Prizewinning author Jonathan Harr embarks on an spellbinding  journey to discover the long-lost painting known as The Taking of Christ–its mysterious  fate and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated Caravaggio devotees  for 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. But  it is not until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, that  she finally manages to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Painting\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble  of 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 clearly  reported details about life in the city.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost  painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste—and  about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall  prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever  hope to read.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble of writing what will probably be a bestseller . . . rich and wonderful . . .in 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 doesn't plump up his tale. 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. And who wouldn’t in Italy? The pleasures of travelogue here are incidental but not inconsiderable.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste—and about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever hope to read.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Harr’s lean, observant prose provides sensory intimacy without sensory overload. . . . The result is a revealing portrait of a world seldom seen by ordinary folks. . . . At its best, Harr’s magnetic storytelling recalls Cappelletti’s first encounter with the work of Caravaggio. To her, his paintings seemed ‘to pulse with heat and life, capturing a moment in time like a scene glimpsed through a window.’”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[\u003ci\u003eThe Lost Painting\u003c\/i\u003e] reads like a whodunit, romantic thriller and scholarly monograph rolled into one. . . . A colorful cast of real-life charmers, dreamers and oddballs worthy of a novelist’s vivid imagination.”\u003cb\u003e—Baltimore \u003ci\u003eSun\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Painting\u003c\/i\u003e . . . [Harr] bestows on it all of his narrative gifts. . . . Cappelletti . . . notes that ‘nowadays almost every art historian with an interest in the seicento [17th century] had a Caravaggio article in the works, and museums everywhere wanted to put on a Caravaggio exhibition. . . .’ She called it ‘the Caravaggio disease.’ . . . Readers of The Lost Painting may well find themselves similarly afflicted.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNewsday \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Riveting . . . Harr [is] a consummate storyteller. . . . An effortlessly educational and marvelously entertaining mix of art history and scholarly sleuthing.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBooklist \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Part detective story, part treasure hunt, this book takes us from dusty basement archives to the ornate galleries of Europe’s finest art museums. . . . Harr provides a fascinating glimpse into the insular world of art history and restoration. . . . Art lovers and mystery fans should find plenty to ponder and enjoy.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eJonathan Harr is the author of the national bestseller A Civil Action, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He is a former staff writer at the New England Monthly and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he has taught nonfiction writing at Smith College.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau\u003c\/i\u003e at \u003cu\u003ewww.apbspeakers.com\u003c\/u\u003e  Part 1    THE ENGLISHMAN    The Englishman moves in a slow but deliberate shuffle, knees slightly   bent and feet splayed, as he crosses the piazza, heading in the   direction of a restaurant named Da Fortunato. The year is 2001. The   Englishman is ninety-one years old. He carries a cane, the   old-fashioned kind, wooden with a hooked handle, although he does not   always use it. The dome of his head, smooth as an eggshell, gleams pale   in the bright midday Roman sun. He is dressed in his customary manner-a   dark blue double-breasted suit, hand tailored on Savile Row more than   thirty years ago, and a freshly starched white shirt with gold cuff   links and a gold collar pin. His hearing is still sharp, his eyes clear   and unclouded. He wears glasses, but then he has worn glasses ever   since he was a child. The current pair are tortoiseshell and sit   cockeyed on his face, the left earpiece broken at the joint. He has   fashioned a temporary repair with tape. The lenses are smudged with his   fingerprints.    Da Fortunato is located on a small street, in the shadow of the   Pantheon. There are tables outside, shaded by a canopy of umbrellas,   but the Englishman prefers to eat inside. The owner hurries to greet   him and addresses him as Sir Denis, using his English honorific. The   waiters all call him Signore Mahon. He speaks to them in Italian with   easy fluency, although with a distinct Etonian accent.    Sir Denis takes a single glass of red wine with lunch. A waiter   recommends that he try the grilled porcini mushrooms with Tuscan olive   oil and sea salt, and he agrees, smiling and clapping his hands   together. \"It's the season!\" he says in a high, bright voice to the   others at his table, his guests. \"They are ever so good now!\"    When in Rome he always eats at Da Fortunato, if not constrained by   invitations to dine elsewhere. He is a man of regular habits. On his   many visits to the city, he has always stayed at the Albergo del   Senato, in the same corner room on the third floor, with a window that   looks out over the great smoke-grayed marble portico of the Pantheon.   Back home in London, he lives in the house in which he was born, a   large redbrick Victorian townhouse in the quiet, orderly confines of   Cadogan Square, in Belgravia. He was an only child. He has never   married, and he has no direct heirs. His lovers-on this subject he is   forever discreet-have long since died.    Around the table, the topic of conversation is an artist who lived four   hundred years ago, named Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Sir Denis   has studied, nose to the canvas, magnifying glass in hand, every known   work by the artist. Since the death of his rival and nemesis, the great   Italian art scholar Roberto Longhi, Sir Denis has been regarded as the   world's foremost authority on Caravaggio. Nowadays, younger scholars   who claim the painter as their domain will challenge him on this point   or that, as he himself had challenged Longhi many years ago. Even so,   he is still paid handsome sums by collectors to render his opinion on   the authenticity of disputed works. His verdict can mean a gain or loss   of a small fortune for his clients.    To his great regret, Sir Denis tells his luncheon companions, he's   never had the chance to own a painting by Caravaggio. For one thing,   fewer than eighty authentic Caravaggios-some would argue no more than   sixty-are known to exist. Several were destroyed during World War II,   and others have simply vanished over the centuries. A genuine   Caravaggio rarely comes on the market.    Sir Denis began buying the works of Baroque artists in the 1930s, when   the ornate frames commanded higher prices at auction than the paintings   themselves. Over the years he has amassed a virtual museum of seicento   art in his house at Cadogan Square, seventy-nine masterpieces, works by   Guercino, Guido Reni, the Carracci brothers, and Domenichino. He bought   his last painting in 1964. By then, prices had begun to rise   dramatically. After two centuries of disdain and neglect, the great   tide of style had shifted, and before Sir Denis's eyes, the Italian   Baroque had come back into fashion.    And no artist of that era has become more fashionable than Caravaggio.   Any painting by him, even a small one, would be worth today many times   the price of Sir Denis's finest Guercino. \"A Caravaggio? Perhaps now as   much as forty, fifty million English pounds,\" he says with a small   shrug. \"No one can say for certain.\"    He orders a bowl of wild strawberries for dessert. One of his guests   asks about the day, many years ago, when he went in search of a missing   Caravaggio. Sir Denis smiles. The episode began, he recalls, with a   disagreement with Roberto Longhi, who in 1951 had mounted the first   exhibition in Milan of all known works by Caravaggio. Sir Denis, then   forty-one years old and already known for his eye, spent several days   at the exhibition studying the paintings. Among them was a picture of   St. John the Baptist as a young boy, from the Roman collection of the   Doria Pamphili family. No one had ever questioned its authenticity. But   the more Sir Denis looked at the painting, the more doubtful he became.   Later, in the files of the Archivio di Stato in Rome, he came across   the trail of another version, one he thought more likely to be the   original.    He went looking for it one day in the winter of 1952. Most likely it   was morning, although he does not recall this with certainty. He walked   from his hotel at a brisk pace-he used to walk briskly, he says-through   the narrow, cobbled streets still in morning shadow, past ancient   buildings with their umber-colored walls, stained and mottled by   centuries of smoke and city grime, the shuttered windows flung open to   catch the early sun. He would have worn a woolen overcoat against the   damp Roman chill, and a hat, a felt fedora, he believes. He dressed   back then as he dresses now-a starched white shirt with a high,   old-fashioned collar, a tie, a double-breasted suit-although in those   days he carried an umbrella instead of the cane.    His path took him through a maze of streets, many of which, in the   years just after the war, still lacked street signs. He had no trouble   finding his way. Even then he knew the streets of central Rome as well   as he knew London's.    At the Capitoline Hill, he climbed the long stairway up to the piazza   designed by Michelangelo. A friend named Carlo Pietrangeli, the   director of the Capitoline Gallery, was waiting for him. They greeted   each other in the English way, with handshakes. Sir Denis does not like   being embraced, and throughout his many sojourns in Italy he has   largely managed to avoid the customary greeting of a clasp and a kiss   on both cheeks.    Pietrangeli told Sir Denis that he had finally managed to locate the   object of his search in, of all places, the office of the mayor of   Rome. Before that, the painting had hung for many years in the office   of the inspector general of belle arti, in a medieval building on the   Via del Portico d'Ottavia, in the Ghetto district of the city. The   inspector general had regarded the painting merely as a decorative   piece with a nice frame, of no particular value. The original, after   all, was at the Doria Pamphili. After the war-Pietrangeli did not know   the precise details-someone had moved it to the Palazzo Senatorio, and   finally to the mayor's office.    Pietrangeli and Sir Denis crossed the piazza to the Palazzo Senatorio.   The mayor's office lay at the end of a series of dark hallways and   antechambers, a spacious room with a high ceiling and a small balcony   that looked out over the ancient ruins of the Imperial Forum. There was   no one in the office. Sir Denis spotted the painting hanging high on a   wall.    He remembers standing beneath it, his head canted back, gazing intently   up and comparing it in his mind with the one he had seen at Longhi's   exhibition, the Doria Pamphili version. From his vantage point, several   feet below the painting, it appeared almost identical in size and   composition. It depicted a naked boy, perhaps twelve years old, partly   reclined, his body in profile, but his face turned to the viewer, a coy   smile crossing his mouth. Most art historians thought Caravaggio had   stolen the pose from Michelangelo, from a nude in the Sistine Chapel,   and had made a ribald, irreverent parody of it.     From where he stood, Sir Denis could not make out the finer details.   The surface of the canvas was dark, the image of the boy obscured by   layers of dust and grime and yellowed varnish. But he could tell that   the quality was superb. Then again, so was the quality of the Doria   Pamphili painting.    He turned to Pietrangeli and exclaimed, \"For goodness sake, Carlo, we   must get a closer look! We must get a ladder.\"    Waiting for the ladder to arrive, he paced impatiently in front of the   painting, never taking his eyes off it. He thought he could discern   some subtle differences between it and the Doria version. Here the   boy's gaze caught the viewer directly, mockingly, whereas the eyes of   the Doria boy seemed slightly averted, the smile distinctly less open.   When a workman finally arrived with a ladder, Sir Denis clambered up   and studied the canvas with his magnifying glass. The paint surface had   the characteristic craquelure, the web of fine capillary-like cracks   produced by the drying of the oil that contained the paint pigments. He   saw some abrasion in the paint surface, particularly along the borders,   where the canvas and the wooden stretcher behind it came into contact.   In some areas, the ground, or preparatory layer, had become visible. He   noted that the ground was dark reddish brown in color and roughly   textured, as if sand had been mixed into it. This was precisely the   type of ground that Caravaggio had often used.    He studied the face of the boy again, the eyes and mouth, areas   difficult even for a great painter. This face, he concluded, was much   livelier than the Doria version. Indeed, the entire work felt fresher   and lighter in both color and execution. He detected the spark of   invention and creativity in this painting, something a copyist could   never achieve. By the time he climbed down the ladder he felt convinced   that Caravaggio's hand had created this painting. As for the Doria   version, it was possible, as some maintained, that Caravaggio himself   had copied his own work, perhaps at the insistence of a wealthy patron.   But Sir Denis was skeptical. He doubted that Caravaggio had ever known   about the Doria painting.    At Da Fortunato, Sir Denis pauses after telling this story, and then he   smiles. Longhi died years ago, and he'd never accepted the Capitoline   version as the original. Longhi was not one to admit a mistake, says   Sir Denis. That was the beginning-Sir Denis chuckles-of many   disagreements and a long, contentious, and very satisfying feud.    The Englishman has had a hand in the search for several other lost   paintings by Caravaggio. He mentions one in particular-it was called   The Taking of Christ-that had been the object of both his and Longhi's   desire. It had vanished without a trace more than two centuries ago.   Like the St. John, many copies had turned up, all suggesting a   masterpiece, but none worthy of attribution to Caravaggio. Longhi, near   the end of his life, had come up with an important clue in the mystery   of the painting's disappearance.    It had been a clever deduction on Longhi's part, Sir Denis tells his   guests. But, poor fellow, he hadn't lived to solve the mystery.    The past held many secrets, and gave them up grudgingly. Sir Denis   believed that a painting was like a window back into time, that with   meticulous study he could peer into a work by Caravaggio and observe   that moment, four hundred years ago, when the artist was in his studio,   studying the model before him, mixing colors on his palette, putting   brush to canvas. Sir Denis believed that by studying the work of an   artist he could penetrate the depths of that man's mind. In the case of   Caravaggio, it was the mind of a genius. A murderer and a madman,   perhaps, but certainly a genius. And no copy, however good, could   possibly reveal those depths. That would be like glimpsing a man's   shadow and thinking you could know the man.      Part 2    THE ROMAN GIRL    A late afternoon in February, the sun slanting low across the rooftops   of Rome. The year was 1989. From the door of the Bibliotheca Hertziana   on Via Gregoriana came Francesca Cappelletti, carrying a canvas bag   full of books, files, and notebooks in one hand, and a large purse in   the other. She was a graduate student at the University of Rome,   twenty-four years old, five feet six inches tall, eyes dark brown,   cheekbones high and prominent. Her hair, thick and dark, fell to her   shoulders. It had a strange hue, the result of a recent visit to a   beauty salon near the Piazza Navona, where a hairdresser convinced her   that red highlights would make it look warmer. In fact, the highlights   made it look metallic, like brass. She wore no makeup, no earrings, and   only a single pearl ring on her left hand. Her chin had a slight cleft,   most noticeable in repose, although at the moment she was decidedly not   in repose.    She was late for an appointment. She had a long, rueful history of   being late. As a consequence she'd perfected the art of theatrical   apology. The traffic of Rome was her most common excuse, but she'd also   invented stuck elevators, missing keys, broken heels, emotional crises,   and illnesses in her family. Her apologies had a breathless, stricken   sincerity, wide-eyed and imploring, which had rendered them acceptable   time and again to friends and lovers.    This appointment was with a man named Giampaolo Correale. He had hired   Francesca and several other art history students, friends of hers, to   do research on some paintings at the Capitoline Gallery. Every few   weeks, he would convene a meeting at his apartment to discuss their   progress. Francesca wasn't always late for these meetings. And on those   occasions when she had been, Correale had usually forgiven her with a   wave of his hand. She had proven herself to be one of his more   productive workers. All the same, he had a temperament that alarmed   Francesca, capable of expansive good humor one moment and sudden fits   of anger the next.    She rode her motorino, an old rust-stained blue Piaggio model, past the   church of Trinità dei Monte and the Villa Medici, down the winding road   to the Piazza del Popolo. She was a cautious but inexpert driver,   despite eight years of experience. Her destination, Correale's   apartment, was on Via Fracassini, a residential area of   nineteenth-century buildings, small shops, and restaurants, a mile or   so north of the city center. She calculated she would be about fifteen   minutes late and began considering possible excuses. The truth-that she   simply lost track of time while reading an essay on iconography-seemed   somehow insufficient.New York Times Bestseller; Author of A Civil Action; The quest for a Caravaggio masterpiece;  With a new Epilogue by the author; One of the 10 Best Books of the","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302487118053,"sku":"NP9780375759864","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375759864.jpg?v=1767740328","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-lost-painting-isbn-9780375759864","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}