After his death, the old priests took back their power and life returned to the old ways under his son, the young Pharaoh, Tutankhamen. Amarna was literally razed, smashed to bits and unknown until the modern era. There has been much speculation about the political, religious and personal reasons which drove Akhenaten's experiment with monotheism. It has provided fodder for a fair amount of historic fiction and lots of research. I've not read this book, but Mahfouz is a highly articulate and ultimately captivating author.

A romantic tale spun around the visual evidence and slim bit of factual information we have regarding the series of six tapestries in the so-called millefleur style, The Lady and The Unicorn which are held in the collections of the French National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, known as the Musee Cluny.

Based on the coat of arms on the armor worn by the lion and the unicorn, the tapestries are thought to have been commissioned by or for Jean le Viste, a lawyer and nobleman in the court of Charles VII of France.

The romance itself, is a mere bit of fluff by comparison with the story of the tapestries themselves. That story, as Chevalier has researched and imagined it, is powerful, from the idea and design of the tapestries to the details of how they would have been woven in Belgium in the late 15th century.

Peter Tremayne is actually Peter Berresford Ellis, a respected scholar of early Irish history, and, under a second pseudonym, the creator of a trilogy about Dracula. The Sister Fidelma Series features Sister Fidelma of Kilgare, a highly educated religieuse and law advocate, as well as a member of Ireland's royal family in the 7th century. There are at least six books in the series.

. Shroud for the Archbishop is actually set in Rome, and there is a strong evocation of place. Absolution by Murder is set at Whitby in 664. Whitby is located in Yorkshire on the north coast of England. It has a long history, dating back at least to the 7th century. It is perhaps best known today for its cod (Whitby cod makes some of the finest "fish and chips" in England) and as a tourist destination. One can roam the remains of the late medieval, elegant Cistercian monastery on the bluffs at the south end of the historic town and imagine it in Sister Fidelma's time.

This book has been for over two years now the hot seller for a summer afternoon's reading or a long plane trip. The story has also captured romantic and commercial imaginations, spawning other texts examining Brown's theories, as well as tours of places mentioned in the book. There is enough sense of "Da Vinci Code" mania, if you will, to make the average art historian or art lover shudder.

The story is an intriguing mystery thriller There's all kinds of trivia, both real and imagined, relating to Leonardo's art, the Louvre, the business art history and the business of codes. There's also some very sloppy history, pertaining not just to art, but Christianity and the history of France during the late Roman and post-Roman periods. It is well and good to remember that it is a work of fiction - and a fun "read" at that!

The conceit is that a painting of Raphael's known as the "Leopardi Madonna", burned in a warehouse at the end of WWII, has resurfaced in a highly mysterious and illegal auction in Venice. Our hero, Jordan Brooks, packing his own bag of personal woes, turns up trying to decide whether or not to participate. The plot thickens, considerably - sometimes to the point of being inscrutable. However, the information about Raphael, and the splendid tour of Venetian architecture and canals make it an interesting story. Refinement of the plot and editing of the writing (which starts out as florid and self-conscious, but improves) would have helped. An entertaining story, but without the punch of a Silva or Brown.

More intriguing, after the fact, is an article in the London Times from February 22, 1999 by Richard Owen about a possible Raphael known as "The Madonna of the Hay," which had been recovered accidentally by the Italian police in a "sting" operation of organized crime related to illegal trade in arms and nuclear materials. A painting of that name had been in the Leopardi collections, sold to a German buyer and last seen in Germany by Fischel in the 1920s. The "web" yielded no follow up to the 1999 Owen's article, and there is no information provided by Cleveland as to whether or not any of this inspired his novel.

This historical novel is set in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, with the story moving between Milan and Mantua, with occasional stops in Ferrara, Pavia and Venice. The story sticks closely to known historic fact and features primarily historic figures, including Isabella d'Este of Ferrara who married Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, and her sister Beatrice d'Este who married Ludovico Sforza. Ludovico Sforza was famously the employer of Leonardo da Vinci for almost two decades. Leonardo's art is cleverly woven in through the history of these two women and the politics of the time.

One reader at Amazon.com made the point that the author could have created a richer novel if she had not stuck so closely to the historic facts. I would say that there is a kind of stiffness to novel, perhaps because of this, but the story moves along well. If all the characters are not as complexly drawn as they might have been, I think it is a lesser fault. The history itself is compelling, and the way Leonardo's story and art are treated is very clever.

The setting for this book is the months immediately following the disastrous floods in Florence, Italy in November, 1966. Margot Harrington, a conservator at the Newberry Library in Chicago, determines that she must get to Florence to help. She uses all her meager resources, eventually coming to temporary safe harbor in a convent. There she teaches the sisters how to dry and reconstruct their considerable, and precious library. In the course of handling these books, it is discovered that an ordinary prayerbook was bound up with a group of images which constitute a manual about sex. The images allegedly were done by the premiere engraver of the early 16th century, Marcantonio Raimondi to accompany a text by Pietro Aretino. This [fictional] book was promptly banned and confiscated by the Vatican, but apparently this one copy escaped notice.

The Florence adventure is a coming of age experience for our narrator, Margot Harrington, whose life becomes intertwined with the contemporary fortunes of the eccentric book she is called upon to save. Romance, mystery and a bit of a thriller, with lots of interesting information about Florence after the flood and about the business of book conservation.

The Bernini Bust. New York: Berkley Prime Crime Paperback, 2001.

 The Raphael Affair. New York: Berkley Prime Crime Paperback, 1998.

 The Titian Committee. New York: Berkley Prime Crime Paperback, 1999

Swan is new to me, and I have not yet read this book. It is an art history mystery. The title tells the tale, an elaborate story about the forging and marketing (foiled, of course) of a Leonardo da Vinci drawing. There is apparently a great deal of detail about da Vinci drawings and the art holdings of the British royal family.

Swan has written a number of other art history mysteries, including The Final Faberge and The Cezanne Chase.

However, the preponderance of evidence, based both on historic context and documents as well as on optical demonstration, seems to suggest that Hockney's thesis is in error.

Although just as controversial, the most persuasive challenge to Hockney comes from David G. Stork, Chief Scientist at the Ricoh California Research Center . His full bibliography regarding the Hockney theory can be found at: http://www.diatrope.com/stork/FAQs.html . There's a short discussion at: http://webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/ . Stork also provides an abstract of the 2005 publication edited by Sven Dupré: Early Science and Medicine (X, no. 2): Optics, Instruments and Paintings, 1420-1720: Reflections on the Hockney-Falco Thesis [Brill Academic Publishers: Leiden, The Netherlands, 2005].

King tells the story of how Michelangelo came to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II in exhausting detail. The early chapters are intriguing. King discusses the history of Julius' life and Papacy, as well as Michelangelo's early career and his relationships to his peers such as Bramante.

King then tracks the development of Michelangelo's progress across the ceiling, panel by panel, filling in lots of technical detail about the art of fresco, as well as maintaining a continuing commentary on contemporary political events, both secular and religious. Copious notes and documentation. Some color images and a map of the ceiling, but mostly small black and white images of preparatory sketches and related material.

The Caravaggio Obsession. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1984.

The Rembrandt Panel. Pinnacle Books, 1982.

The philosophy scholar/narrator and his wife, a iconographer (the study of the meaning of symbols,  especially in art) have gone to the English countryside for a year's sabbatical to finish their respective books. Life it turns out is not quite so simple, and the narrator becomes involved with an art collection of a faded aristocrat buried in the depths of the English countryside. The narrator becomes besotted with the seemingly least important work in the collection, and the reader is swept up in the quest to determine if the much abused panel is a long lost Breughl. With generous dollops of art history and Dutch history, this book becomes a "page turner." The material on the Netherlands under Spanish domination is especially fascinating. The run up to the end is by turns funny and hair raising.

Frayn has written an extraordinary number of interesting books, and has a particular ability to get inside a character's head. Kurt Vonnegut, in his new book of essays (2005), Man without a Country, characterizes Frayn as a very humorous man who has become serious. I would say both qualities are present in this book.

Harr has written this to read like a novel - and it does become a page turner eventually. The look into the processes of scholarly sleuthing in archives, the processes of restoration and even the art of connoisseurship are fascinating. But the larger question a student in this course needs to contenplate is the matter of fashionable styles. I don't want to give away the chase, but the story turns on a series of crticial misattributions. Fashions come and go and come again in the history of art, and the loss and rediscovery of this artwork is premiere example of the rise and fall and rediscovery of the Baroque.

There is a double story line, as we follow the fortunes and misfortunes of the narrator in 20th-century New York City, and the turbulent life of Frans Hals in 17th century Holland. The narrator is a feckless young man who is a perpetual graduate student wholly lacking in ambition. Because he is skilled at reading Dutch, he is approached to translate a text which has turned up mysteriously in someone's attic. In spite of himself, he gets caught up in the story the text has to tell, for it is the presumed lost diaries of the artist Frans Hals, diaries in which the artist is often very candid about his life, his loves and his clients.

The reader, too, gets caught up in the story - particularly the Hals story - which Kernan has cleverly concocted from the few known facts about Hals and from the author's own imaginings about the subjects and the situations portrayed in Hals' paintings. Blessedly, Hals will also ultimately be the salvation of our narrator.

A wonderful tale of Peter Bruegel, using his paintings as the guide. Only the barest facts of Bruegel's life are known, so Rucker builds Bruegel's life, working backwards from the paintings. Each chapter is headed by a painting. It is an entrancing tale of a man and his art. It is also the sobering story of the ruthless imposition of the Spanish Inquisition on the Low Countries by their Spanish/Hapsburg rulers (especially Philip II of Spain and the Regent, Margaret of Parma) in the mid-16th century.

Rucker, a scholar and college professor of mathematics and theories in computer science, is best known by the public for his science fiction writing. He became fascinated by Bruegel's work, eventually traveling to visit all the major paintings, as well as doing a good deal of work in the secondary resources. Even more than Frayn's novel, Headlong (which Rucker acknowledges), this book leaves the reader with vivid images of the artist, the ultimately secure space he created for himself with family and friends, the religious ferment and political chaos of the time.

Bruegel painted parables, and on another level, one could even understand this book as a parable for our own time.

Barnesandnoble.com website quotes Book Magazine: "This engaging novel, based on the life of the Baroque Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, begins with a notorious trial. When Artemisia's father, painter Orazio Gentileschi, publicly accuses his colleague, Agostino Tassi, of raping his teenage daughter, the case is brought before the papal court of Rome. ....

"Despite the brutal opening scenes, this isn't a sensational victim story. Instead, it is a thoughtfully rendered account of Artemisia's unconventional and inspiring life after the trial. Shaped around the events that "could have" inspired the paintings ascribed to the real Artemisia Gentileschi, the narrative chronicles her quickly arranged marriage to Pietro, the birth of her daughter and her struggles to define herself as a painter at a time when only male artists were taken seriously."

To which I would only add, yes! This is one of the best historical novels I have read in a long time. I found it absolutely riveting. Vreeland takes some license with the particulars of Artemisia's life, but they are not drastic or discomforting.

The plot is standard issue thriller, with innocent amateurs caught up in the serach for the fabled Amber Room, the incredible cabinet-type room fashioned entirely from amber, and ultimately decorated with objects of amber. A gift of the Prussians to Peter the Great of Russia in 1716, the room was finished and installed in the Winter Palace (the Hermitage) in St. Petersburg, and later moved by Catherine the Great to the Yekaterinsky Palace just outside St. Petersburg. Appropriated and dismantled by the Germans in World War II, the stolen room, still in its crates, was shipped away from the areas of intense bombing at the end of World War II, and disappeared. This story plays with the idea of finding it, a charming mix of fact and fiction.

On a larger scale, this is another view into the enormous scale of art thefts perpetrated by the Nazis before and during World War II.

This is not a novel, but the drama it recounts is as good as any well written work of fiction.

This is more social history than art history, but an intriguing documentation of the artist, the subject and the artwork itself. Davis gives us the biography of Madame Gautreau as well as Sargent's biography. She provides insight into the aristocratic social world of Paris in the second half of the 19th century, and world filled with reefs, rocks and shoals on which to founder. The ambitious (and certainly love-smitten) artist and the self-made socialite meet. The result is an extraordinary portrait, whose unexpected effect is to shatter both Sargent's career and the continuing social ambitions of Madame Gautreau. Sargent eventually remade his life, moving between Paris and London and sometimes his family in America. Madame Gautreau had a sadder life. But Sargent would never again paint such an adventurous portrait. Well worth the reading.

Depths of Glory. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985

Lust for Life. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1934.

Same author as The Agony and the Ecstasy discussed above. Depths of Glory is about the life of the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, and Lust for Life is about the life of the post-impressionist, Vincent Van Gogh.

I have never read Lust for Life, but am presuming from reviews that it meets the same standard as Stone's other books.
Depths of Glory was a book that took me by surprise, in no small part because I really knew so little about Pissarro. Pissarro had a long and interesting career, outliving most of his contemporaries amongst the Impressionists. He was willing to try to different styles, different approaches, and always willing to assist a colleague or friend. He is also, often, overlooked in many of the major surveys, relegated to a quick image, and "also-noted" status. This sweeping story redeems him from that obscurity, and while it is a little long, it is a rewarding book. I have looked upon Pissarro's in museums and galleries with profound respect ever since.
Both books are available in current paperback editions.

This is the only work of fiction which I have identified, thus far, which is specifically about artists in the 20th century. The figure of the artist in this book, Martin Sloane, is based on the life of the artist, Joseph Cornell. Cornell, who died in 1972, can be considered a surrealist, but he was more than that. His collages and vignettes in boxes, all using a wide array of found and recycled objects and papers, explore complex, almost visionary fantasies. Cornell was a recluse, and lived out his adult life in the house in which he grew up.

The fictional artist, Martin Sloane, is described as making the kinds of exquisite, fantastical boxes for which Cornell is famous, but Sloane, however eccentric, does permit himself some social, human life beyond his art. The tale is told by his former lover, from whose house he disappeared, seemingly into thin air, in the middle of the night. The ending is unexpected. The device used to "illustrate" the artist's boxes is particularly clever.

ART

Dramatists Play Service Inc ,1999

The English Assassin.

Dimensions [Putnam Publ. Group], 2002

This is a good thriller, in the tradition of Ken Follett. While artwork is at the center of the story, the story is not about the art and the artists.

iInstead, this story is about the greatest theft of art that has ever been - the rape of innumerable collections of art throughout Germany and all the countries Germany invaded in World War II. The history of this period, as it pertains to the artwork, has only emerged in the last decade and an increasing amount of documentation and straight, solid, historical writing has been done on the subject, in books as well as periodicals (Art News, in particular, broke the story and tracked it, prodding people along, aiming to bring the subject to public scrutiny and to begin to help beleaguered heirs recover pieces of their parents and grandparents estates.) Silva's book, The Confessor, while not about art, is about the continuing fall out from the Holocaust and its toll on the Roman Catholic Church. Equally good book.

The Forest Lover.

Viking [The Penguin Group], 2004