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Title: The Lost Painting
ISBN: 0375759867
Author:
Jonathan Harr
Publicate Date: 2006-11-07
Publish: 2006-11-07
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.74
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.93
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.20
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A good Read
Anyone interested in art history, and especially Carravagio's work, would enjoy this book. If the reader has visited Rome, it's all the
more intriguing. Harr has done remarkable research on the period and the known details of Carravagio's life.
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2: The lost chance
There's nothing terribly or conspicuously *wrong* with this book, but there are several things that prevent it from being the wonderful read it could have been, being, as it is, based on a great story that should have ensured an absolute page-turner.
The first thing (which other reviewers have pointed out before me) is that Mr. Harr seems undecided on whether he wanted to write a novel or a work of nonfiction. He has written the latter, but trying (unsuccessfully in my opinion) to infuse it with some of the typical trappings of fiction thrillers, i.e. ending chapters with adrenaline-charged sentences or 'revelations', including a love affair, etc. This is unfortunate, because nonfiction, when presented in the right way (and not 'dressed up' as something else), can be as compelling as fiction. The example that comes most readily to mind is Deborah Cadbury's harrowing account of how the quest for Louis XVII, the boy king of France who went missing after the Revolution, was solved with the help of a DNA investigation. Unlike Mr. Harr, Ms. Cadbury didn't try to make the people in her book sound like characters from the Da Vinci Code.
This approach forces Mr. Harr to try to make the people in his book (who are all real) 'interesting' in the way that a writer of fiction tries to make his characters interesting. I couldn't have cared less about the love life of Francesca Cappelletti, the sexy Italian scholar on a motorbike --- whose affair with Luciano, by the way, must be the most boring 'romance' to have graced the pages of a book in decades. Neither did I care about the personal frustrations of art restorer Benedetti, or English scholar Mahon's aversion to being hugged by women. Most of these people actually come across as being rather petty (e.g. the two young female scholars' unkind behavior towards the aged Marchioness at whose residence they make their discoveries), but even with these human failings exposed they just don't seem to be very interesting.
The interspersion of a couple of chapters dedicated to Caravaggio's life felt a bit artificial, as if Mr. Harr was trying to fill up space. More substantial information about his life, or a better distribution of it throughout the book, would have been better.
The other problem I had with this book was its lack of passion. It doesn't sound as if Mr. Harr is in love with any of his subjects --- Caravaggio, Italian paintings, the world of art scholarship. This is a rather dull read, as if the work had been commissioned --- a view borne out by Mr. Harr's admission that he had originally written an article, but needed a book project in order to avail himself of an invitation to the American Academy in Rome. I didn't feel the passion that seeps through the pages of, say, Antonia Fraser's biographies, or Thomas V. Cohen's wonderful account of 'love and death in Renaissance Italy' (which covers roughly the same period in which Caravaggio lived).
Many reviewers have expressed disappointment in 'The Lost Painting' as compared with Mr. Harr's previous work, 'A Civil Action'. I can't comment on that, not having read it. All I can say is that 'The Lost Painting' is an informative read about a very interesting historical find, but don't expect an unputdownable book --- you'll be disappointed.
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3: Art History Engagingly Disguised as a Detective Novel
Jonathan Harr's "The Lost Painting," a step-by-step account of the history and discovery of Caravaggio's long-missing "The Taking of Christ," is a real page-turner. As some reviewers have noted, it is at times a little too novelistic for its own good, as when Harr meticulously details a certain art historian's eating preferences or belabors inconsequential facts about a student researcher's dilapidated car. But the book is so interesting and readable that those flaws are easily forgiven.
Most annoying to me was the author's refusal to document any of his research (excepting a partial list of works consulted, at the book's conclusion). I suppose this caters to the current tendency to write non-fiction with the same character development and narrative flow of fiction, and to conceal along the way any indication that the author is imaginatively reporting findings from interviews and scholarship--presumably in case a simple reference or reminder of that fact might traumatize the non-scholar or break the narrative spell. However readable the result, I can't help but wax nostalgic for the (apparently outdated) courtesy of a footnote in the text, so readers could more easily trace sources and items of interest. I'll admit, this tendency is more of an annoyance with books like Ross King's "Brunelleschi's Dome," which was filled with tantalizing bits of information begging to be further explored. But I don't think an occasional endnote in this book would have been too much to expect, even from an author who clearly aimed from the beginning at a "best-seller" audience. And a few pages of photographs would have enriched this book considerably.
That said, "The Lost Painting" is a fascinating tale that deftly interweaves the efforts and ambitions of scores of fanatic 'Caravaggisti' attempting to track down Caravaggio's painting and distinguish it from its copies. In fact, one of the book's many strengths is that it engagingly reveals to the non-academic the laborious and demanding, but often petty and cut-throat world of modern scholarship in the visual arts. I found myself constantly amused by the differences between this kind of research, which leads scholars across continents from one musty archive and museum to another, and the kind in why I engage, where most traveling takes place almost entirely within the pages of various readily-available books, and differs from scholar to scholar mostly in the itinerary of one's reading. And Harr does bring his interviewees and other characters convincingly to life. Perhaps the book's strongest virtue is its detective-story plotting and pacing, which is as flawlessly rendered as one could hope. Once I started reading, I could hardly put it down until I finished it. So don't start reading "The Lost Painting" unless you have a sunny chair in which to hibernate and day or two to kill.
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4: Very disappointing
Now, I loved A Civil Action. But one of the main reasons that that book was so great is because it had terrific villains. The Lost Painting, on the other hand, doesn't have a single antagonist, unless you count time, which I don't.
Also, A Civil Action had a single madcap hero who relented never. The Lost Painting, by contrast, has at least three distinct protagonists (if you count the guy in the epilogue), who, for much of the tale, work serially and not together. Not to mention, they don't have much in the way of personalities.
These are the main reasons why the so-called quest for Caravaggio's Taking of Christ makes for such a bad story.
The only truly gripping part of the book is the epilogue. But this, alas, written prematurely as it is, provides no real conclusion, and so is also deeply unsatisfying.
2005 must not have been a very good year for nonfiction efforts, as the New York Times named this weak tea one of the five best.
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5: A rare nonfiction glimpse into world of art investigation
Jonathan Harr brings you into the world of people toiling to authenticate a Caravaggio. Their integrity and dedication to their profession is revealing.
It is nonfiction so the ending lacks drama but we feel the satisfaction of the people involved.
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