Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Title | Portrait of an Unknown Woman PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Silva |
Publisher | HarperCollins |
Pages | 403 |
Release | 2022-07-19 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0062834924 |
In a spellbinding new masterpiece by #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva, Gabriel Allon undertakes a high-stakes search for the greatest art forger who ever lived Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. Gabriel soon discovers that the work in question, a portrait of an unidentified woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a fiendishly clever fake. To find the mysterious figure who painted it—and uncover a multibillion-dollar fraud at the pinnacle of the art world—Gabriel conceives one of the most elaborate deceptions of his career. If it is to succeed, he must become the very mirror image of the man he seeks: the greatest art forger the world has ever known. Stylish, sophisticated, and ingeniously plotted, Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a wildly entertaining journey through the dark side of the art world—a place where unscrupulous dealers routinely deceive their customers and deep-pocketed investors treat great paintings as though they were just another asset class to be bought and sold at a profit. From its elegant opening to the shocking twists of its climax, the novel is a tour de force of storytelling and one of the finest pieces of heist fiction ever written. And it is still more proof that, when it comes to international intrigue and suspense, Daniel Silva has no equal.
Portrait of an Unknown Lady
Title | Portrait of an Unknown Lady PDF eBook |
Author | Maria Gainza |
Publisher | Catapult |
Pages | 118 |
Release | 2022-03-22 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1646220331 |
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice New York Times Notable author María Gainza, who dazzled critics with Optic Nerve, returns with the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico? On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us “not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist.” Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by "authenticity" in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and what is told.
Portrait of a Man Unknown
Title | Portrait of a Man Unknown PDF eBook |
Author | Nathalie Sarraute |
Publisher | |
Pages | 232 |
Release | 1990 |
Genre | French literature |
ISBN |
Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Title | Portrait of an Unknown Woman PDF eBook |
Author | Vanora Bennett |
Publisher | HarperCollins UK |
Pages | 536 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0007224931 |
The year is 1527. Hans Holbein is at the beginning of his career when he travels to England under the patronage of Sir Thomas More. As a guest in the splendid More household, he begins to paint their family portrait. The Holbein family portraits frame this story with its background of love, family, and political turmoil.
Hans Holbein
Title | Hans Holbein PDF eBook |
Author | Derek Wilson |
Publisher | Random House |
Pages | 338 |
Release | 2014-09-25 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1448103762 |
One of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, Hans Holbein the Younger was also a complex and fascinating man who knew Erasmus, Thomas More, Henry VIII and many of the sixteenth century's wielders of power and influence. He developed his own distinctive attitudes towards religion, politics and social life as he moved among stalwart burghers, merchant adventurers and the bejewelled denizens of a glittering court. The Elizabethan artist Nicolas Hilliard recognised him as 'the greatest Master in [portraiture] that ever was'. Yet the range of Holbein's talent went far beyond painting likenesses. He was constantly in demand for trompe-l'oeil murals and intricate jewellery designs, and he revolutionized book illustration. He produced Catholic altarpieces and Protestant propaganda engravings, woodcuts and drawings depicting the stories of the bible. In this fascinating biography, acclaimed historian Derek Wilson gives a fresh account of Holbein's motives and paintings, suggesting that they included coded signals and propaganda about political figures of the time. Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man is a controversial reinterpretation which presents the artist as a man inextricably bound up in the stirring events of a creative and turbulent age.
Optic Nerve
Title | Optic Nerve PDF eBook |
Author | Maria Gainza |
Publisher | Catapult |
Pages | 208 |
Release | 2019-04-09 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1948226170 |
"In this delightful autofiction―the first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in English―a woman delivers pithy assessments of world–class painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole." ―The New York Times Book Review, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' Choice The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo’s bodies. The mystery of Rothko’s refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator’s husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault’s workshop; Gustave Courbet’s devilish seascapes incite viewers “to have sex, or to eat an apple”; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau’s honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator’s life in Buenos Aires―her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies. Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English–language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.
Portrait of a Spy
Title | Portrait of a Spy PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Silva |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Pages | 468 |
Release | 2011-07-19 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 0062072196 |
“A bona fide thrill ride.” —Miami Herald “Silva builds tension with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot.” —People Portrait of a Spy is Silva’s eleventh thriller to feature art restorer and master spy Gabriel Allon as he races from Great Britain to Washington to New York to the Middle East on the trail of a deadly and elusive terrorist network responsible for massacres in Paris, Copenhagen, and at London’s Covent Garden.