Publisher: 25th September 2020 by HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter
Pages: 384 pages
How I Read It: ARC book
Genre: historical fiction
My Rating: 3 cups
Synopsis:
Milan, 1492: When a 16-year old beauty becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan, she must fight for her place in the palace—and against those who want her out. Soon, she finds herself sitting before Leonardo da Vinci, who wants to ensure his own place in the ducal palace by painting his most ambitious portrait to date.
Munich, World War II: After a modest conservator unwittingly places a priceless Italian Renaissance portrait into the hands of a high-ranking Nazi leader, she risks her life to recover it, working with an American soldier, part of the famed Monuments Men team, to get it back.
Two women, separated by 500 years, are swept up in the tide of history as one painting stands at the center of their quests for their own destinies.
My Thoughts
The Night Portrait sounded intriguing with a focus on art theft in the Reich during WWII. With two timelines and four perspectives, there is a great deal going on in this book but unfortunately, it did not really work for me as a piece of fiction. However, there are a lot of good historical details included within - two varying perspectives of WWII and two historical figures from 15th century Italy, one being Leonardo da Vinci.
‘Edith’s eyes immediately went to the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, as if the nearly 500-year-old girl could impart some of her own serenity to a situation teetering on the brink of disaster.’
The blurb is somewhat misleading as I thought there to be only two character viewpoints. It was slightly ambitious to have four character voices spanning centuries even though the theme of beauty and finding your way in dark times is solid. Sadly, I found it to be too much and with strangely varying and short chapter lengths, I was struggling with the read overall.
I found the WWII story to be the most engaging and admit to glancing over the da Vinci chapters with Cecelia (The Lady with the Ermine) being a rather irksome character. I wanted to maintain focus on what I found to be the stronger of the two tales - art theft. The book as a whole takes a long time to evolve and not until well past half way do things pick up. In some ways it felt like four separate stories as the connections were tenuous at best and that, I felt, was the downfall.
‘Dominic could hardly believe his ears. How could the American president be worried about art when thousands of people were losing their lives? But at the same time, he couldn't deny his wonder. “You mean these… Monuments Men… are just focused on saving art? How are they doing that?”
Art lovers, however, should rejoice in this read, with loads of details to consider (both fictional and otherwise). I really appreciated Edith’s efforts at preservation and learning a bit more about the famous Monuments Men of WWII. Fans of da Vinci and Renaissance art may appreciate his fictional voice with a possible history offered behind this famous painting. For me, sadly, there was too much going on, it dragged out and I had trouble focusing outside of Edith’s tale.
“My father always taught me that art was one of the things that gave people something to live for, and so we have to preserve it, to share it. I never understood why someone could presume to possess a piece of the past like that - a piece of the past that belongs to all of us.”
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.
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