Book
Quattrocento : a novel / James McKean.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780385503198 :
- ISBN: 0385503199 :
- Physical Description: viii, 307 p. ; 22 cm.
- Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: New York : Doubleday, 2002.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) > Fiction. Art restorers > Fiction. Triangles (Interpersonal relations) > Fiction. Time travel > Fiction. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Valemount Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Valemount Public Library | f mck (Text) | 35194001362268 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 July 2002
Matt O'Brien, who works for the Metropolitan Museum in New York, is restoring a painting of a beautiful young woman he refers to as Anna. The project consumes Matt, until he reaches the conclusion that the portrait of Anna was painted by Leonardo. When the mysterious Johannes Klein brings Matt a panel he claims is from the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance, Matt is intrigued by the panel and Klein's knowledge of art and physics. To Matt's dismay, the secret of his beloved painting of Anna is discovered, ensuring fame but also the loss of the painting to the museum. Distraught, Matt retreats to the newly installed studiolo in the museum, and is shocked to find himself thrust back in time to fifteenth-century Italy. He meets Anna and falls in love with her but is forced to contend with the cunning knight Leandro, who is after Anna's wealth. An intriguing first novel, rich with historical detail and combining art, physics, time travel, and a love story. ((Reviewed July 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2002 May #2
An art curator falls in love with a Renaissance portrait as newcomer McKean, a violin maker, straddles two genres: the newly popular art-history novel and good old-fashioned time-travel SF.Matt O'Brien, an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discovers a small, unsigned portrait of a beautiful young woman in the museum's storage bins and is immediately enchanted. Meanwhile, the museum installs an authentic Italian studiolo, a small study surrounded by panels painted in elaborate trompe l'oeil during the quattrocento (15th-century) period of high Renaissance art. The funds were provided by a mysterious European physicist named Klein, and as Matt restores his painting of the woman he names Anna, the two men begin a friendship based on conversations about the role of physics in art and music. At the same time, Matt has a series of waking dreams set in the distant past that feel strangely real, while his conscious life becomes a disorienting blur of lost moments and confused memories. Then he has an out-of-body experience inside the studiolo and wakes up in Renaissance Italy, where he falls passionately in love with the real Anna, herself a painter and wife of the dying local duke. (Unfortunately for the reader, Matt's relationship with the duke's librarian, Rodrigo, is far livelier.) Again there is much talk of art and philosophy before Matt finds himself time-traveling back to the present and waking up in a hospital bed. His restored painting of Anna, now a certified Leonardo, hangs in the museum, but his friends and colleagues have no memory of the studiolo or a benefactor named Klein. On the hunt for his missing friend in contemporary Prague, Matt instead discovers Klein's secret and the answer to his own time-traveling dilemma before returning to the quattrocento world and to Anna.Well-researched but talky forays into intellectual issues raised by art, music, and science, all wrapped around a half-baked plot and silly characters. Copyright Kirkus 2002 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2002 March #1
In this debut by expert violinmaker McKean, an art restorer shattered by the realization that he may have discovered a new Leonardo finds himself drawn across the centuries into a love triangle involving the painting's subject and her knight. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2002 June #1
The thrilling aspect of this time-traveling drama guaranteed to excite any art-lover is the discovery of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci; far less moving is the obligatory romance driving the plot. Matt O'Brien, an art restorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is cleaning a grimy little painting, buried under many coats of old varnish, when he realizes it may be a hitherto unrecognized Leonardo, potentially of inestimable value. The subject is a beautiful woman, whom Matt names Anna. He spirits the painting out of the museum and compares it in Washington's National Gallery to the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, the sole genuine painting by da Vinci in the country, one of the few of his oeuvre in the world. Both are painted on matching poplar wood, with comparable signature marks by the artist, but the deeper significance to Matt is Anna herself, with whose quattrocento, or early Renaissance, image he has fallen in love. So deeply in love is he, that, like other love-besotted heroes of such stories, he is whisked back to the land and time of his beloved. He discovers that Anna is a contessa, married to an elderly man and pursued by the dangerous and jealous knight, Leandro. Mostly the two discuss pigments, as Anna paints. Their passion does not go beyond a genteel kiss before Matt is returned to his own time, but with the aid of some dubious scientific rigmarole he is back in the quattrocento. Conveniently, Anna's husband has died, the knight is gone and the way is clear for love. McKean's copious descriptions and ponderous prose slow his story down to a crawl, snuffing out the few genuine sparks of painterly delight. (July 2) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
