hi! could you recommend any fiction books that have some descriptions of real paintings in them? the painting doesn’t have to be part of the plot (like with Dorian Gray), the description could be just a paragraph, a whole page, or even longer. i am open to any genre. also it could be really nice if you have some suggestions from italian literature?
thanks a lot, everyone!
by camp_champ998
18 Comments
*The Goldfinch* by Donna Tartt would be perfect for this.
The author isn’t Italian, but you might also like *Oil and Marble* by Stephanie Storey.
How to be both by Ali Smith
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Dan Brown – Inferno, DaVinci Code, Angels & Demons etc.
Murakami – Killing Commendatore
Abarat is a fantasy novel written and illustrated by Clive Barker, the first in Barker’s The Books of Abarat series following Candy Quackenbush, a bored teenager from Minnesota who escapes her mundane life through a magical lighthouse to the Abarat, an archipelago of 25 islands, each frozen in a different hour of the day, where she becomes a key player in saving the world from darkness. The book series features hundreds of full-color, large-scale oil paintings created by the author himself, rather than a commissioned illustrator.
The Idiot by Dostoevsky has a pretty significant description/character development related to the painting Dead Christ by Hans Holbein the Younger.
“Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!”
These are two non-fiction books that discuss paintings in detail:
*Washington’s Crossing* by David Hackett Fischer. Fischer discusses Emanuel Leutze’s painting *Washington Crossing the Delaware* in great detail.
*The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo* by Jerry Brotton. Brotton discusses Hans Holbein the Younger’s *The Ambassadors* and Jan van Eyck’s *Arnolfini Portrait,* among others.
Bleak house by Charles dickens – there’s a painting in Mr tulkinghorns ceiling that is very effectively described several times in the book.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris revolves quite a bit around the antagonist’s obsession with Blake’s The Great Red Dragon engraving.
***Girl with a Pearl Earring* by Tracy Chevalier (1999)** is a fictitious story about the model for the Vermeer painting of the same name…
Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser
Okay For Now by Gary D Schmidt. Describes the techniques Audobon used in his bird paintings and uses the birds to narrate character growth for the main character. 11/10 book
Rebecca
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali has a big painting plot point with amazing descriptions!
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant for Renaissance Italian Art!
Horse by Brooks