The unknown of the portrait: the review of Serena Dandini

THEAnd holiday homes hold secrets. Whether you are lucky enough to have one of the family to which we return regularly in the summer, whether they take an unknown place for rent that has lulled the happiness of other holidays. Upon reopening, the rooms wrapped in a vague hint of mold return small treasures Like a cave by Alì Babà.

And between a plate full of shells and a expired sun cream, Books always sprout. They are the ones we wanted to read and we didn’t have time Or those chosen by someone else that maybe we would never buy. Unexpected surprises in which we can immerse ourselves without any expectation just as as girls we left lightly with summer loves already knowing that they would vanished with the arrival of autumn.

Between many Simenon and great classics, a boast of a novel of last year with the intriguing title has sprung shyly for me, The unknown of the portrait (And/or), with a picture of Gustav Klimt on the cover. Someone had left him like a message in a bottle and I immediately did it.

An art mystery

Author Camille De Peretti is a solid French writer now to her ninth book e The daring story of a painting by the Viennese secession painter immediately seduced me. The picture portrays a young woman with a pale complexion and pink cheeks wrapped in a floral shawl. But when a high school student, during a research for exams, analyzes him at the Ricci Oddi gallery in Piacenza makes a sensational discovery. Below that woman, there is another identical but with a large black hat with wide pitches.

It is the same model of a previous work by Klimt deemed disappeared. X -ray exams confirm this incredible intuition. And then surprisingly in 1997 the painting was stolen and found only more than twenty years later in the garden of the gallery wrapped in a bag of garbage. Incredible, but true. There was enough material for an adventurous novel that reconstructed the mysteries that envelop this portrait as in a mystery.

In fact, the writer invent a compelling family saga with great skill That from the Vienna of the early 1900s arrives in the New York of the Great Depression, to the Texas of the 80s, drawing credible characters who cross the century with us between enormous wealth, tremendous poverty and many twists. I will not tell you more, only that as soon as I finished the book I left it in plain sight for the joy of the next reader and next summer.

All articles by Serena Dandini.