Lemuria Bookstore Blog

Because I recently graduated from the Art History program at Savannah College of Art and Design, The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr was recommended to me.  I was immediately intrigued.  The book follows the investigation of one of the many missing Caravaggio paintings, The Taking of Christ. Harr recounts the work of three people who spent years searching for a painting done by the Baroque artist who is now recognized as a genius.  Michelangelo Merisa de Caravaggio mastered painting at a young age and is known for the dramatic use of light depicted in his compositions. In Harr’s book, Dennis Mahon, an English Caravaggio expert, Francesca Cappelletti, an Art History student in Rome, and Sergio Benedetti, an Italian restorer at the National Gallery in Dublin, all use their skills to rediscover the masterpiece.

The research done by Francesca, and one of her fellow students, leads them to the archives of the Mattei family who were patrons of Caravaggio generations before.  Sergio Benedetti used X ray and infrared photographs of paintings to discover the authenticity of the work as well as the artist’s techniques, by looking under the layers of paint to the under drawings.  In Caravaggio’s case, however, the drawings were actually made in the gesso with the end of a paintbrush, not charcoal or paint.  The restorer’s process is important because it helps us distinguish between the original paintings and their multiple copies.  Harr’s nonfiction story takes us into a detailed account of how The Taking of Christ was rediscovered.  This New York Times Bestseller keeps the characters and the process of their research interesting until the end of the book, whether you are an art expert or not.

-Sarah Clinton