The Art of Literature

I have three great lifetime loves: music, books and art. It's always a great pleasure when I can combine two or three of these precious things. Here are a few of such titles:

The Portrait - Iain Pears
In addition to his irreverant Art History Mystery series, Pears penned this dark, dense story of a painter seeking revenge on his nemesis.

Loving Frank - Nancy Horan
Okay, it's architecture, not art, but still... the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the woman said to have wrecked his first marriage, Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

Music and Silence - Rose Tremain
In the 17th centure, King Christian IV of Denmark struggles with his wife's infidelity, the fall of his country, and a fear for his life. His one consolation is listening to his Royal Orchestra. His wife, Kirsten, however, detests music.

The Songcatcher - Sharyn McCrumb
Folksinger Lark McCourry is haunted by the memory of a song she heard as a child in North Carolina. It comes from her ancestor, Malcolm MacQuarry, who was kidnapped from the Scottish island of Islay. The song was passed down through the generations, though now the memory dimmed; Lark's only hope of preserving her family legacy lies in Nora Bonesteel, who talks to both the living and the dead.

The Golden Tulip - Rosalind Laker
Francesca and Aletta, the two eldest daughter of the painter Hendrik Visser, are talented artists in their own rights, while the youngest, Sybella, is far more interested in marrying well. Hendrik is successful, but his drinking and gambling keep the family in penury. Once the girls' mother dies, Francesca has new responsibilities, which she must soon balance with an apprenticeship to a little-known Vermeer, and suitors Pieter van Doorne, a tulip grower, and wealthy ship owner Ludolf van Deventer.

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer's household, and experiences the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high.

The Forest Lover - Susan Vreeland
Canadian painter Emily Carr travels through native villages and wilderness of British Columbia in the early 1900s, often alone, on a quest to paint totem poles and other artifacts before the indigenous traditions died out and the poles were destroyed or sold.

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Latin terrorists storm an international gathering hosted by an underprivileged country. Among the hostages are a world class opera singer and her biggest fan, a Japanese tycoon who has been persuaded to attend the party on the understanding that she will perform half a dozen arias after dinner.

The Girl with the Botticelli Eyes - Herbert H. Lieberman
In New York City, Mark Manship, curator at the Met, is staging the most exhaustive Botticelli exhibit in history, and hoping to convince Isobel Cattaneo, the only direct descendant of Botticelli's chief model, to help promote the show. In Italy, crazed nationalist Ludovico Borghini is terrorizing the art world, slashing priceless canvases and staging his own grotesque "exhibits"--using the human body parts of innocent victims as props. Now, as Borghini has Isobel in his clutches, Manship must summon every fiber of his being to stop a madman bent on destroying everything he holds dear.

The Forgery of Venus - Michael Gruber
Chaz Wilmot is a painter who possesses a virtuosic command of the techniques of the old masters, but his style of painting is no longer popular, and he refuses to shape his talent to fit the fashion of the day. A break comes when with a commission to restore a Venetian palace fresco by the eighteenth-century master Tiepolo, for a disreputable Italian businessman. Once there, Wilmot discovers that it is not a restoration but a re-creation, indeed a forgery.

I Am Madame X - Gioia Diliberto
A fictional memoir of the legendary American-born beauty Virginie Gautreau, the subject of John Singer Sargent's famous 1884 painting, Portrait of Madame X, Gioia Diliberto's I Am Madame X risks dashing cold water on one of the loveliest and most persistent mysteries in Western art history: what the model is thinking.