With a Gem-Like Flame: A Novel of Venice and a Lost Masterpiece - Hardcover

Cleveland, David Adams

2.55

11 ratings by Goodreads

9780786708772: With a Gem-Like Flame: A Novel of Venice and a Lost Masterpiece

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786708778 ISBN 13: 9780786708772

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2001

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Common sense dictates that it simply cannot exist -- the "Leopardi Madonna," a glorious treasure by the fifteenth-century master Santi Raphael. All the reference books and reliable scholarship indicate that the painting was destroyed in 1945, when the Allies bombed a Nazi warehouse filled with looted art. Only now the Madonna has reappeared, it seems, in this stunning, original thriller that uncovers greed and treachery in the rarefied precincts of the art world. Summoned to Venice from America to view the painting, Renaissance scholar and sometime-art dealer Jordan Brooks returns to the city that had enchanted him twenty years before. As he ponders the possibility that a fake was set afire a half century earlier and the authentic work has resurfaced -- or that the actual masterpiece was lost in the conflagration and a magnificent fake has taken its place -- he also contemplates the strange and secret auction which offers him a chance to bid on the painting. Set against the backdrop of Venice in late autumn, when the timeless city's rain-swollen lagoons threaten to swamp all her treasures, the novel limns the path that lands Jordan on the doorstep of his former teacher, Giorgio Sagredo, who has compromised his ideals to sell the Madonna. It leads Jordan, too, into a horde of amoral art dealers eager to make a killing and, more fortuitously, introduces him to Katie, a young American student who has a scent for the truth and a way of turning up at the moment he needs her most.

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About the Author:

David Adams Cleveland is a novelist and art historian. His latest novel, Time's Betrayal, was awarded Best Historical Novel of 2017 by Reading the Past. A Starred Booklist Review noted that Time's Betrayal, "raises the bar for multi-generational epics . . . the writing is gripping throughout . . . this unforgettable tour de force is well worth the time." Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler called Time's Betrayal, "a vast, rich,endlessly absorbing novel engaging with the great and enduring theme of literary art, the quest for identity." Bruce Olds, two-time Pulitzer nominated author, described Time's Betrayal as a "monumental work . . . in a league of its own and class by itself . . . a large-hearted American epic that deserves the widest possible, most discriminating of readerships." In summer, 2014, his second novel, Love's Attraction, became the top-selling hardback fiction for Barnes & Noble in New England. Fictionalcities.uk included Love's Attraction on its list of top novels for 2013. His first novel, With a Gemlike Flame, drew wide praise for its evocation of Venice and the hunt for a lost masterpiece by Raphael. His most recent art history book, A History of American Tonalism, won the Silver Medal in Art History in the Book of the Year Awards, 2010; and Outstanding Academic Title 2011 from the American Library Association; it was the best selling American art history book in 2011 and 2012. David was a regular reviewer for Artnews, and has written for The Magazine Antiques, the American Art Review, and Dance Magazine. For almost a decade, he was the Arts Editor at Voice of America. He and his wife live in New York where he works as an art adviser with his son, Carter Cleveland, founder of Artsy.net, the new internet site making all the world's art accessible to anyone with an internet connection. More about David and his publications can be found on his author site: davidadamscleveland.com.

Review:

When I tell you that this book revolves around a long-thought-lost Raphael painting, and one man's attempt to buy it and discover its secrets, not necessarily in that order, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you know what you're in for - another art-crime detective novel. But you'd be wrong and, like me, pleasantly surprised. For this book stresses the art above the crime, and is far more about the man on its trail, than the twists in that trail. And the lost Raphael Madonna is so lovingly described you know why he becomes obsessed. And there's a fair bit of raunchy sex, too, with a woman he meets and enlists, and you can see why he'd want her as well. Along with the art and the sex there's Venice, and they eat ice cream - what more can you ask from life? The prose style hits a few purple patches at the start, but soon settles down, with some fine business around our hero's mental state and life view. He's an odd, but believable, cove who's sensitive to art but a bit of a bastard, and more than somewhat of a cynic. You'll care, I think, and be moved to visit Venice, eat ice cream, and...well, the other stuff's up to you.
-- Fictional Cities

A real tour de force...With a Gemlike Flame manages to turn a good suspense novel into a riveting exploration of self, of art and of Venice as a portrait of each other...the non-hackneyed descriptions of Italy's fabled city are particularly noteworthy. Serena Stier, Chairperson of the Iowa Writers Conference on Mystery Novels

With a Gemlike Flame has been one of our best selling and best liked reads...due not only to the fine writing but also that its appeal crosses several different genres, from mystery to historical, to art and so on. I have hand sold hundreds of copies to pleased customers--a perfect airplane read! Perry Haberman, Owner, Madison Avenue Bookshop.

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