The Lost Painting

by Jonathan Harr

http://amazon.com/dp/0375759867

Prizewinning author Jonathan Harr embarks on a 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. The artist was a master of the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by personal demons. 400 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. Now, in an Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, in the cobwebbed and dusty basement of a decaying palazzo, lit by a single bulb, in an archive unknown to scholars, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, stumbles across a clue that will lead her to track the missing 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.