“The canvas vibrated with beauty. She took her breath away and drowned in the sky blue eye speckled with green. Was she really the double of this stranger? »
Painted in Vienna in 1910, Gustav Klimt’s painting Portrait of a Lady was purchased by an anonymous collector in 1916, retouched by the master a year later, then stolen in 1997, before reappearing in 2019 in the gardens of a museum of modern art in Italy.
No art expert, no museum curator, no police investigator knows who the young woman depicted in the painting was, or what mysteries surround the turbulent history of her portrait.
From the streets of Vienna in 1900 to Texas in the 1980s, from Manhattan during the Great Depression to contemporary Italy, Camille de Peretti imagines the destiny of this young woman, as well as those of her descendants. A masterful fresco where family secrets, dazzling successes, thwarted loves, disappearances and resounding tragedies mingle.
The bookseller’s opinion
“Around the incredible destiny of a painting by the painter Gustav Klimt, Camille de Peretti has created a masterful novel that spans eras and continents. A wildly romantic read that carries us away! »
Aurélie Baudrier Bookstore Insomnia (Décines-Charpieu)
The extract
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