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The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

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The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

by Harr, Jonathan

  • Used
  • very good
  • Hardcover
  • Signed
  • first
Condition
Very Good/Very Good
ISBN 10
0375508015
ISBN 13
9780375508011
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Portland, Oregon, United States
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About This Item

Random House, 2005-10-24. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 6x1x9. Signed by author on title page. Minor shelf wear to binding. Light wear & soiling on edges of text block. Text and images unmarked. The dust jacket shows some light handling, in a mylar cover.

Synopsis

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. 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.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.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.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. The fascinating details of Caravaggio's strange, turbulent career and the astonishing beauty of his work come to life in these pages. 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. . .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's previous book, A Civil Action, was made into a John Travolta movie), Harr doesn't plump up hi 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." --The New York Times Book Review"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." --The EconomistFrom the Hardcover edition.

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Details

Bookseller
Chaparral Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
PARSjonPAI
Title
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
Author
Harr, Jonathan
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Jacket Condition
Very Good
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First Edition
ISBN 10
0375508015
ISBN 13
9780375508011
Publisher
Random House
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
2005-10-24
Size
6x1x9
X weight
22 oz

Terms of Sale

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About the Seller

Chaparral Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2015
Portland, Oregon

About Chaparral Books

Chaparral Books is located across from Elephant's Deli on S Corbett Avenue in Portland. We have a well rounded collection of subjects, including an extensive core collection in Western Americana and Native American Literature including Western Writers.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Edges
The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
Text Block
Most simply the inside pages of a book. More precisely, the block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book....
Shelf Wear
Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Title Page
A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...

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