Set in Renaissance Florence, this import from Spain begins as a gothic. Arduino, a 13-year-old boy from a family of prestigious tailors, convinces his father to apprentice him to a master painter, only to find that the Maestro is ill-tempered, miserly and , out of jealousy, has secretly imprisoned a gifted, orphaned apprentice in the attic. At this point Llorente's plotting turns operatic, with fortuitously timed illnesses (the Maestro's), the entrance of a benevolent duke with a handsome commission to bestow and Arduino, the newest boy in the atelier, suddenly calling the shots. Each of the characters is a type of extreme, either saintly or heinous or impassioned, although the Maestro manages, at various stages, to be all three. A motif about individual freedom only adds to the ballast. This title is the first by Llorente and Alonso to appear in the U.S. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Originally published in Spain in 1989, a story that begins as an instructive look at apprenticeship in Renaissance Florence (no particular century or historical characters) and ends as a melodrama about a mysterious prisoner in a master painter's attic. Narrator Arduino is a prosperous tailor's son who prevails on his reluctant father to apprentice him to Cosimo di Forl�, an accomplished but mean-spirited painter who starves his young helpers and secretly keeps one in chains because the boy's ability outshines his own. Arduino discovers and befriends the talented Donato; and, when Cosimo falls ill midway through a major commission, he reminds him of the prisoner, who emerges to save the day and succeed his dying master. This predictable, old- fashioned tale, hinging on Donato's unlikely incarceration and told without subtlety, is a far cry from Johnny Tremain. Still, it's a slim, fast-paced read--and a rare translation of Spanish fiction. (Fiction. 9-12) -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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