Best-selling author to speak on recovering a lost masterpiece
Best-selling author Jonathan Harr will speak at the Hood Museum of Art on Wednesday,
November 15, at 5:30 p.m. about his 2005 novel, The Lost Painting: The
Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece. His talk coincides with the release of
the book in paperback and will include a reception and book signing through
Dartmouth Bookstore in the museum's Kim Gallery.
Harr's book investigates the disappearance and rediscovery of Caravaggio's
The Taking of Christ. Brian Kennedy, director of the Hood, was
assistant director at the National Gallery of Ireland at the time the painting
was discovered in Dublin. "It was one of those remarkable times in life
when the possibility of a major art discovery becomes a marvelous
reality," says Kennedy.
The quest to discover Caravaggio's long-lost painting, its mysterious fate,
and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated devotees for years.
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.
Harr's tale is a real-life mystery that features a rich cast of characters:
Sir Denis Mahon, the world's foremost authority on Caravaggio; Francesca
Cappelletti, an art history student from the University of Rome who makes a
crucial discovery that sparks the search for the lost Caravaggio; and Sergio
Benedetti, a restorer who discovered the painting and found his way to it, with
Brian Kennedy’s assistance, hanging unnoticed in a Jesuit home in Dublin.
Throughout, Harr folds in details about Caravaggio himself, his strange,
turbulent career, and the astonishing beauty of his work.
Jonathan Harr is the author of the national best seller A Civil
Action, winner of the National Book Critics Award for Nonfiction. He is a
former staff writer at the New England Monthly and has written for the
New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He lives and
works in Northampton, Mass., where he has taught nonfiction writing at Smith
College.
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