The Lost Painting

The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

By: Jonathan Harr

Narrated by: Campbell Scott

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Told with consummate skill by the writer of the best-selling, award-winning A Civil Action, The Lost Painting is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story.

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 60 and 80 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.

Praise for The Lost Painting

“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.... If you're a sucker for Rome, and for dusk... [you'll] enjoy Harr's more clearly reported details about life in the city.” (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 Economist)

©2005 Jonathan Harr (P)2005 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"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 doesn't plump up his 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)

“Part detective story, part treasure hunt, this book takes us from dusty basement archives to the ornate galleries of Europe’s finest art museums.... Harr provides a fascinating glimpse into the insular world of art history and restoration.... Art lovers and mystery fans should find plenty to ponder and enjoy." (Kirkus Reviews)

“Harr’s lean, observant prose provides sensory intimacy without sensory overload.... The result is a revealing portrait of a world seldom seen by ordinary folks.... At its best, Harr’s magnetic storytelling recalls Cappelletti’s first encounter with the work of Caravaggio. To her, his paintings seemed ‘to pulse with heat and life, capturing a moment in time like a scene glimpsed through a window.’” (The Washington Post Book World)

A Detective Story for Art Lovers

The Lost Painting is a very interesting read. While providing historical background on the life and art of Caravaggio 400 years ago, the story also shows how art historians research and investigate artwork today.

could not stop listening

Fabulous plot. The story is full of historical facts about Caravaggio's life, and intrigues and jealously in the universe of today's art scholars . I wish I could find similar books.

an incredible and complex story unfolds seamlessly

This book was absolutely excellent, an easy listen with a wonderful cast of characters. The storyline flows nicely despite being very complex, surrounding the incredible discovery of a Caravaggio painting in the unlikeliest of places. The rich narrative seamlessly ties together diverse characters and the underlying mystery surrounding their connection, albeit unknown to them, to the lost painting. Throughout the story, the various personalities are fleshed-out as they are followed, and the truth of the painting's history unfolds. The details were wonderful, making it easy to visualize the different places visited, the people in the story, and the various levels of connection that are made as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I love art and mysteries, and I loved this book. I was also pleasantly surprised by the brief but informative interview with the author. Highly recommended.

Fascinating

This is an amazing story told with finesse. I really enjoyed the detailed descriptions of archival research and art restoration. You will learn a great deal about how paintings are painstakingly traced through historical records, and how their authenticity can be proven. No, it's nothing like the Da Vinci Code - this is real scholarship and far more interesting.

The reader is fine, although he has a sad, melancholic tone that drains the energy a little; a book with this much excitement and revelation needed more enthusiasm.

A very interesting life behind some exquisite art

If you could sum up The Lost Painting in three words, what would they be?

I have listened twice! (More than 3 words......)

What did you like best about this story?

The way it was told through the eyes of the young historians pouring through old materials in an elderly ladies villa to find their answers.

love it

loved it great story .Caravaggio was a great artist and the author wrote a very good book

haar goes for baroque

entirely dramatically satisfying and well informed on the (my) art world. i particularly appreciate that the author allowed different elements of the story to more completely unfold without constantly switching back and forth to other narrative threads as many adhd-inducing writers feel compelled to, apparently in the interests of ‘tension’.

Engrossing and well written

Jonathan Harr has written a story within a story, but not just the usual kind. This is a biography within a true story, a window on history glimpsed from the world of art historians. He has crafted a tale that is both suspenseful and full of human drama. The listener comes to care about the real people who populate this book, whether they are our contemporaries or lived 400 years ago in Rome.
I hated for the story to end. There is an interesting interview with Mr. Harr at the end of the book. His style is truly unique, a contemporay historian/journalist who writes non-fiction with the feel of a novel. He is writing shorter pieces now, but I hope that he will begin another full length work soon.

Riveting

It's amazing that a book about art historians digging through archives can be so fascinating, but it is. This is a real tour de force; I cannot recommend it highly enough!

Search and Revelation

This story is small, compelling gem: three modern day characters hovering around the traces of genius from an artist now gone for nearly 400 years.

For some reason, this plot did not confuse me: Harr does an effective job of connecting the reader with each of the three main protagonists, and of explaining to me their separate fascinations with Caravaggio's wild brilliance. I felt the web of social relations surrounding each of the three, and the depth of their shared "Caravaggio madness", as a binding force in the book.

Harr's prose is well-suited to audio format: clear, crisp, very much to the point. He turns his fascination with technical detail into a strength: the detail takes on a life of its own at times, serving as the medium through which the searchers come into contact with the painting: and through it with Caravaggio himself. This is, after all, a story of a transformative search: one that alters the lives of two of the three main characters, and that reveals the life of the fourth.

This is neither an exhaustive assessment of the painting nor a thorough biography of the artist. Instead, it is (in effect) a thoughtful assessment of why we dig into the beauties of the past and on the pleasures and miseries of scholarship, even of obsession.

The reader is perfect: great sound, intonation and pace. Altogether a must-read.