Quattrocento - Hardcover

McKean, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385503199 ISBN 13: 9780385503198

Publisher: Doubleday, 2002

Synopsis

In the tradition of Time and Again, a sweeping love story/time-travel epic situated between the modern-day New York art world and fifteenth-century Tuscany.

Matt O’Brien has a quiet life: A painting restorer with a particular love of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance, he toils away millimeter by millimeter, bringing old oils to new light. But one day he happens upon a painting in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum that is thick with centuries of yellowed varnish and dust. As he uncovers the portrait of a mysterious, beautiful woman, he finds himself suffering from an urgent sense of déja vu coupled with the pain of falling in love with a person long dead. Meanwhile, strange things have been happening in the museum since the installation of a wood-paneled room from Gubbio called a studiolo. As Matt increasingly seeks refuge in this magical room from the pressures of having potentially discovered a Leonardo da Vinci, the centuries slip away and he finds himself in the center of a love triangle, with Anna on one side and the Machiavellian knight Leandro, fighting for her fortune, on the other.

Obsession and passion combust in this exotic tale that is at once contemporary and rich in period detail. Rooted in art history, music theory, and the rudiments of physics, McKean's debut novel is a mesmerizing tale of time travel and possibility. With twists and turns that are as thrilling as they are unexpected, Quattrocento is escapist storytelling at its very finest.

About this title

About the Author

James McKean has been a violinmaker in New York for more than twenty years. His instruments have won numerous awards and can be heard on concert stages around the world. A recent cello was on view at the American Craft Museum as part of a landmark exhibit on craftwork at the millenium. He is also a contributing editor to Strings magazine, where his articles appear regularly. He lives in Connecticut with his family.

From the Inside Flap

In the tradition of <i>Time and Again,</i> a sweeping love story/time-travel epic situated between the modern-day New York art world and fifteenth-century Tuscany. <br><br>Matt O’Brien has a quiet life: A painting restorer with a particular love of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance, he toils away millimeter by millimeter, bringing old oils to new light. But one day he happens upon a painting in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum that is thick with centuries of yellowed varnish and dust. As he uncovers the portrait of a mysterious, beautiful woman, he finds himself suffering from an urgent sense of déja vu coupled with the pain of falling in love with a person long dead. Meanwhile, strange things have been happening in the museum since the installation of a wood-paneled room from Gubbio called a <i>studiolo</i>. As Matt increasingly seeks refuge in this magical room from the pressures of having potentially discovered a Leonardo da Vinci, the centuries slip away and he finds himself in the center of a love triangle, with Anna on one side and the Machiavellian knight Leandro, fighting for her fortune, on the other. <br><br>Obsession and passion combust in this exotic tale that is at once contemporary and rich in period detail. Rooted in art history, music theory, and the rudiments of physics, McKean's debut novel is a mesmerizing tale of time travel and possibility. With twists and turns that are as thrilling as they are unexpected, <i>Quattrocento</i> is escapist storytelling at its very finest.

Reviews

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.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

chapter 1

Blue. Darker than the sky, as deep as the sea, a blue so rich Matt could almost taste it on the breeze that rippled across the field of asters. Shading his eyes from the hot Umbrian sun, he watched the manticore lope down the field and leap into the sky with a stroke of its powerful wings. A harsh cry and it was gone, circling away over the trees, while below the faint silvery call of trumpets sounded amidst the high tenor yelp of dogs on the hunt. How could he have forgotten?

It was cool under the trees, the air fragrant with the scent of hemlock and mountain laurel. Led on by the neighing of horses and shouts echoing out of sight ahead, Matt forced his way through the underbrush, thick leaves and branches breaking against him like waves, sweat running down his back and into his eyes. It's not too late, he thought. Gone before they were seen, the sinuous outlines of hounds slipped through the shadows, followed by the figure of a man, a flash of red and yellow with a tall black stave in his hands, and then another.

Matt's horse followed, tossing her head as he urged her on, twisting and turning through the underbrush. Bursting into a clearing his mount reared and Matt was drifting through the dappled air, sword sailing from his hand as the trees spiraled around him, their crowns sparkling with sunlight far away. The ground slammed into him, hard under the thin layer of leaves, knocking the wind out of him, sliding away from his hands as he scrabbled to find a purchase, the dirt cold on his cheek.

"Orlando," he gasped, chest burning. The boy, he had to find the boy. He forced himself to his knees, and then with a groan to his feet, staggering as the trees circled him like hawks in the sky, his arm throbbing as though it would burst. His blue doublet crusted with dirt and dead leaves, one knee shining whitely through a jagged tear in his hose, he searched the ground around him for his sword. Orlando, his sword, it was all wrong. A trunk moved, detaching itself from the rest that stood in a silent rank around the glade. Black armor, gigantic, gleamed dully like water under the moonlight, the cuirass emblazoned with a double eagle and another eagle, bronze, nodding from the helmet, wings raised and beak opened in midcry. A sword, flat and broad, rose in its gloved hands, as the figure advanced toward Matt across the glade.

Holding his arm, Matt swayed as he tried to keep his balance. The blade drew closer and closer, settling at last on his chest. The sharp point probed, digging through the linen of his doublet and then his shirt, thin and wet with sweat, finding the soft hollow under his sternum, pushing him back step by step until the broad trunk of a tree stopped him. Turning up, the tip of the blade lifted him onto his toes, pressing him back against the unyielding tree.

"You don't belong here," a voice, disembodied, came from behind the burnished visor, the slit for the eyes an empty black gash. Another point of steel was next to Matt's eye, the blade of the knife cold against his skin, flattening his cheek. "Do you?" the man whispered. "Do you?" he shouted, and began to laugh, louder and louder, as the sword against Matt's chest dropped away and a massive hand, gloved in leather and chain mail, jammed around his throat, slamming his head back against the rough bark of the tree and lifting him higher and higher until he floated, the soft light of the clearing darkening and turning red and then black, exploding with pinwheels of vibrant color as the laugh rang through him, changing into a single note, discordant and harsh, resonating from deep within, crushing him with its power, the wolf tone--


chapter 2

"Poplar?" Sally asked, turning the small painting over so that she could see the wood panel of the back. She stroked the surface, as smooth as old ivory and almost black with age, the raised grain like the carved veins of a marble statue under her fingertips.

"Lombardy poplar," Matt replied.

"Oh. Lombardy poplar. That makes all the difference in the world."

"Well, it does," Matt said with a faint smile. "Go ahead and laugh."

A harsh tattoo of rain pelted against the window, the storm gaining as the late-November day faded into evening. Water streamed down the glass, dissolving the shadows from the light that, pearl-like, barely reached the back of the cluttered office. "Well, I just don't see it," Sally said, examining the darkened painting. "I can barely make out that it's supposed to be a face. There's something decidedly creepy going on here," she added with a frown. "It makes me think of Ophelia. Floating in the weeds, forgotten by Hamlet. You think you can bring her back to life?"

"I think it's worth a try."

"You're being awfully noncommittal," she said, giving him a sharp glance. "I know you. You're on to something, aren't you? What is this? A lost Leonardo?"

"Dream on. The odds are better than even that I'll never be able to put a name to it." He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead but it fell back again. He couldn't blame her, he thought, for he was just the same. Even though he knew arriving at who painted a picture should be the last step in a very long journey, it was impossible not to start thinking of it right away. Like walking down the street. A person in the crowd catches your eye; is it something singular about the face, or is it someone you know? For him, as an associate curator of Italian paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, it was also a professional reflex, and after five years he had to force himself to look for its own sake.

"Seems like a lot of work," Sally commented. "How long will it take you?"

Matt shrugged. "Hard to say. It depends on what's been put on it over the years. But it's not that big. It shouldn't take me more than a hundred hours. A hundred fifty, at the outside. Maybe two, if some clever restorer way back when came up with some varnish I've never seen before."

"Two hundred hours! Is it worth it?"

"I don't know. I never thought of it that way before."

"You're too much." Sally laughed. "How else would you look at it?"

"I forgot. In the legal world, time is the measure of all things. Two hundred hours would be . . . what? Forty thousand dollars? A minor brush with the SEC?"

"Eighty thousand, but that's not what I meant, and you know it. It's a lot of time out of your life, no matter how you count it. And you're the one who is always so suspicious of anything that pretends to be old. How do you know this isn't a fake?"

Matt took the picture from her and leaned back against the edge of the workbench. Crowded behind him was a jumble of books and tools that had been shoved aside for projects awaiting his attention. At the back of the bench, next to a rainbow of jars shadowed by a forest of brushes bunched together in coffee cups and old cans, stood a small brass clock under a dome of glass. The finely machined works spun and turned in an intricate dance, sparkling in the light of the lamp. The minute hand slipped upward, moving as it edged into perfect alignment with the hour hand, transforming the two into a double-ended arrow. The clock began chiming the hour. A soft counterpoint to the irregular drumming of the rain on the window. As it stopped, the minute hand fell to the right, breaking the arrow. Matt finally stirred, his face relaxing into a faint smile.

"So?" Sally asked. "What's the verdict?"

"It's the real thing," he said, propping the picture back against the ruined fortress of books that tumbled to one side of the workbench.

"What makes you so sure? Tell me what you see."

"I see what you see. A lot of dirt, a lot of work. It's what I don't see that counts."

Sally glanced at the clock. "We should get moving. This thing ends at seven."

"Good point," he replied. "Why don't we just skip it and go have dinner?"

She laughed and handed him his jacket, an old tweed that had seen almost every party he had attended since graduation from college eight years before. "You just told me Charles has been working on this for fifteen years. Come on."

"It's a permanent installation," he protested, shrugging his arms into his coat. "We can see it anytime. He won't even notice."

"Yes, he will," she said, guiding him out the door. "What do you mean, it's what you don't see that matters?"

"The eye sleeps until the spirit awakens it with a question," Matt replied. The door to the stairwell closed behind them with a hollow slam as they walked down the short flight of stairs from the conservation lab to the ground floor of the museum. "That's what my old professor down at NYU always said to us, and he was right. I've had her right next to me for weeks now. Half the time I look at her I don't even realize I have."

"So?"

"No alarm bells. When you look at a picture, you see what you're looking for, or what the painter wanted you to see. It's when you aren't looking that something that doesn't fit will jump out and grab you." They could hear the sounds of a party as they came out into the first-floor galleries of the museum. As they turned the corner into the vast medieval hall, dominated by the three-story carved and gilded rood screen from a cathedral in Spain, the hum of conversation and laughter grew louder. "Do you remember Saint George?"

"I've never been. Where is it? The Caribbean?"

"Saint George and the Dragon. It was a painting attributed to Luca Signorelli, so let's say around 1500. One day while I was talking on the phone I reached across and moved the panel to find a pad of paper and...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385503199
• ISBN 13: 9780385503198
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320