Scandals, Vandals, and da Vincis: A Gallery of Remarkable Art Tales

by Harvey Rachlin

Overview

The secret histories of the world’s most famous masterpieces

Caravaggios, Rembrandts, Monets—the works of immortal artists such as these are indelibly imprinted in the public mind; they are priceless masterpieces whose beauty, artistry, and emotional impact have inspired admiration, awe, and envy through the centuries. Yet behind many of these brilliant paintings and sculptures are fascinating, unique histories. In Scandals, Vandals, and da Vincis, award-winning writer Harvey Rachlin relates in exciting detail how nearly thirty of these works came to be created and how they survived burglary, forgery, revolutions, ransoms, vandals, scandals, religious sects, and shipwrecks to eventually come to their current resting places

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143038351
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/27/2007
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.27(w) x 7.95(h) x 0.76(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harvey Rachlin is the author of 11 books, including Lucy's Bone's, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain and Jumbo's Hide, Elvis' Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha, which were adapted for the smash-hit History Channel series History's Lost and Found. He has written for the New York Times, The Writer, Law and Order Magazine, and numerous other publications, and is a winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is an adjunct lecturer in music at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.

Editorial Reviews

In this book of art gossip and intrigue, Rachlin (Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain) writes that for him, "the past is an obsession." Here, he provides breezy and sometimes riveting accounts of 26 famous paintings. All of these paintings and some of their histories are well known in the art world, although a few stories appear to be told publicly for the first time. Rachlin begins with the Mona Lisa, the world's most famous painting, then goes on to cover Gilbert Stuart's Athenaeum Head of George Washington, the world's most reproduced image (on the $1 bill), before ending with Dali's enigmatic Christ of Saint John of the Cross. Each story is introduced with a theme statement, which is often pedantic. Some of the stories, short as they are, are augmented with rhetorical questions, moralizing, and clichés, features that make the book most appropriate for adolescents with a budding interest in history or art history.
—Ilene Skeen

Library Journal