Perspectivas

by Laurent Binet, Adolfo García Ortega (translator)

En la Florencia del año 1557 hallan muerto al viejo pintor Pontormo, que ha sido asesinado y su cadáver se encuentra a los pies de los frescos en los que trabajaba desde hacía once años. En la escena del crimen se descubre un cuadro obsceno de María de Médici, una de las hijas del duque. El gran Vasari, secuaz del duque, pintor e historiador del arte, se tiene que encargar de la investigación, recorriendo unos ambientes que requieren habilidad, discreción, lealtad, sensibilidad artística y comprensión política.

Europa es un polvorín. Italia es el campo de batalla donde chocan Francia y España, las dos grandes potencias. El duque de Florencia, Cosme de Médici, no solo tiene que lidiar con la reina de Francia, su prima Catalina de Médici y aliada de su viejo enemigo, el republicano Piero Strozzi, sino también con el influjo de un Papa que es un inquisidor de la peor calaña, el que instituyó la prohibición de libros y obras de arte considerados inmorales.

¿Quién es el asesino y quién el caricaturista? ¿Cuál es el móvil del asesinato y del crimen de lesa majestad?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, Italy, Art, Historical, Mystery Thriller

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2023

About the author

Son of an historian, Binet was born in Paris, graduated from University of Paris in literature, and taught literature in Parisian suburb and eventually at University. He was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his first novel, HHhH.

Laurent Binet est né à Paris. Il a effectué son service militaire en Slovaquie et a partagé son temps entre Paris et Prague pendant plusieurs années. Agrégé de lettres, il est professeur de français en Seine-Saint-Denis depuis dix ans et chargé de cours à l'Université. HHhH est son premier roman.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A matter of perspective and of perception

Perspective gave us depth. And depth opened the gates of infinity to us.


Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) - Venus, Cupid, Folly and time (1545)

An epistolary murder mystery, set in 16th century Florence, revolving around Renaissance artists and the Medici family, action-packed, frothily humorous, full to the brim with colourful characters, juicy courtly intrigues, a splash of nudity, incisive reflections on art and power, a treaty on perspective in art– how many more reasons does one need to wolf down Laurent Binet’s delectable patchwork of historical fact and fiction in this suspenseful, exuberant and exhilarating historical novel?

The Manierist painter Jacopo do Pontormo (1494-1557) is found dead in the chapel of the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, at the foot of the frescoes of The Last Judgment he has been painting for a decade. Destined to become Florence’s answer to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, he has been scrupulously keeping his work shielded for onlookers behind wooden screens. There are several indications that he has been murdered (the chisel embedded in his heart a strong contender), the possible blasphemous character of his frescoes together with the find of a painting in his studio showing Maria de ‘Medici, the oldest and nubile daughter of his patron, Duke Cosimo I de ‘Medici, in a lascivious light, putting his violent death even more under a cloud of suspicion.

None other than Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 27 June 1574) – yes, the painter, architect and author of The Lives of the Artists - is entrusted with the mission to investigate the case, find the murderer and clarify the enigmas posed by the frescoes and the salacious painting. Such requires poise but also delicatesse and diplomacy in a time and place characterized by fierce artistic rivalry and social, religious and political tensions, intrigues and scheming - which doesn’t stop Binet from depicting his sleuth Vasari and his footmen more often than not as the proverbial bulls in a china shop.

Framing the collection of 176 letters that he will dish up, Binet pledges the reader that all one needs to know is that the story takes place in Florence, at the time of the eleventh and final Italian war. Whether this bold statement rings true probably depends on the reader’s perspective and expectations when reading historical fiction.

From this gullible reader’s perspective, taking Binet on his word worked out fine. Even more, it feels almost a crime to reveal anything regarding to the plot or the characters, lest to spoil the thrill of the surprise at being handed over a letter by another divine correspondent – Binet generously offering a twenty-some, from artists like Bronzino, Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, to Cosimo I de ‘Medici, his wife Eleanor of Toledo, his daughter Maria and her aunt Catherina de ‘Medici, to rebellious nuns still under the spell of Girolamo Savoronala.

As much as it doesn’t seem necessary to be able to enjoy and get carried away by Binet’s imaginative, riveting and playful epistolary whodunit, a little familiarity with the settings and the historical background of the novel nevertheless might enhance the reading pleasure. Profound knowledge on the period and the artists on the other hand seems to provoke a certain annoyance with anachronisms and misfits in tone and style that connoisseurs of this period have discerned. One reviewer assessed Binet’s novel (rather prissily) as likely appealing to an audience for whom the Italian Renaissance and the Cinquecento are no more than carnival backdrops. For history enthusiasts who struggle with the poetic license of historical fiction writing, Binet’s statement serves as a caveat as well as a cunning disclaimer.

Looking up more on some of the characters inspired by real historical figures like Maria de ‘Medici and the painters quickly shows that Binet used history as he saw fit to spin his own story. Ignorance, sometimes, is a reader’s bliss, and for the inquisitive reader, there is more than enough fascinating material here to start a quest for a more thorough exploration of the historical background and figures.

Although the pace somewhat slows down approaching the denouement due to a few long-winded and slightly repetitive accounts by Vasari and the distinctiveness of the multiple voices of the correspondents is not always fully reflected in the writing style - one of the qualities of the epistolary genre I thought more accomplished in John William’s Augustus, or in Jane Austen’s Lady Susan– for readers who are in the mood to let their hair down, Laurent Binet offers a fast-paced, pretty wildly entertaining and amusing story and a couple of hours of perfect escapism into the fascinating past. Raising some thought-provoking questions on representation, gender and power, Perspective(s) might help to stop yourself from doomscrolling and at least get a couple of hours of relief from despair – a welcome reminder that much might be only a matter of perspective (or from a more pessimistic point of view, just wishful thinking).

A translation of this novel into English will be published in April 2025. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NetGalley and the author for giving me a chance to read an ARC.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Times change, but you are not obliged to change with them.

Yes! At last a book I couldn’t put down!
This is a historical novel, set in 16th century Italy with many prominent characters such as the artists Michelangelo, Cellini, Bronzino and Vasari. Cosimo de’ Medici, his wife Eleanor of Toledo and his daughter Maria. Catherine de’ Medici, queen of France. The historian, Borghini and many more.

The story is about a murder with many suspects, an obscene painting that keeps evading destruction and conspiracies, intrigues and political manipulations.

This is an epistolary novel in which the story unravels through correspondence between the characters. If you love art and this type of books, you will want to read it.
The only drawback was the identity of the culprit, which was unexpected but underwhelming.

Insult is no longer an insult when it is aimed at iniquity – it is simply the truth. Isn’t that the definition of satire? A weapon of the weak to ridicule the mighty.

[Fionnuala]

When I read Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography some years ago I remember thinking he'd be an ideal character to include in a historical fiction set in his native Florence in the 1500s. He portrayed himself as larger than life, braver than the bravest, faster at pulling a knife than any enemy, and a better sculptor than his contemporaries. He wrote very well too, it has to be said, describing his life so entertainingly that I could hardly put the book down.

And so I was happy to discover that he was a character in Laurent Binet's historical novel composed entirely of letters, and that I would get to hear Benvenuto's voice again as if he'd really written the letters in Binet's book in his very imitable style. Because yes, Binet got his voice just right, boastful, confident, angry at times, but most of all, telling about unbelievably daring exploits that he himself was the hero of every time "Le courage et la ruse furent l’épée et le bouclier de Persée pour tuer Méduse, et moi, qui ai survécu à la peste, au sac de Rome, au siège de Florence, aux geôles du Vatican, je n’ai jamais usé de rien d’autre dans toutes mes entreprises." The only pity was that there weren't many letters from the bold Benvenuto in Binet's book!

But that's understandable because there was a large cast of sixteenth century Florentines in this story, and whether they lived across the Arno from each other, or further away in Rome or even in France, they wrote to each other frequently, sometimes several times a day. They tossed off letters as quickly as we do WhatsApp messages, and the couriers who ran back and forth between their houses must have been pretty wiry and fit!

So what were they all messaging about so frantically, you might ask?

Well, Laurent Binet has set his story after the sudden death of the real life artist, Jacobo Pontormo. By the way, everyone in this story, except for a few minor figures, are real historical figures of the time, and they are all connected to the art world or else members of Florence's ruling family, the Medici.

Jacobo Pontormo, who had been working for years on a fresco cycle to rival Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes, died at the beginning of January, 1557, aged 62. Binet places the scene of his death in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, the very location where he'd been working on the frescoes, and makes the death suspicious. The letters that follow, dated from January 1st onwards, are all concerned with discovering the truth about Pontormo's death.

The person who has been put in charge of the murder enquiry is none other than Giorgio Vasari, famous not only for being an artist and an architect but also a historian. His Lives of the Artists is very readable and remains the main source of information on Italian Renaissance and Mannerist artists even today. For example, the Wiki page about Jacobo Pontormo is taken almost word for word from Vasari's chapter on Pontormo just as the opinions Binet gives Vasari about the frescos Pontormo was working on at his death seem to be taken from the same source (well, of course, you might say, and you'd be right).

If I've described Benvenuto Cellini as larger than life, surely Vasari was too. He was involved in hundreds of art-related projects during his life, designing rooms in various Medici palaces, decorating churches, building the famous Vasari corridor that connects the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti, decorating his own houses with intricate wall and ceiling paintings, planning all the pageants held every year in Florence, acting as town councillor in his native Arezzo, not to mention riding around Italy in his spare time to view the work of artists he was writing about in his Lives.

Given all that, it's amusing that Binet added to Vasari's workload by assigning him the task of investigating Pontormo's death, a task that has him running around in greater circles than he must have been doing already.

There's a lot of humour in Binet's book and while some of it is provided by Benvenuto Cellini's boastful letters, plenty of it is to be found in Vasari's missives. Binet has done a fine job not only of giving each letter writer a different style but also of giving Vasari different styles depending on who he's writing to. When he writes to the Duke, Cosimo Di Medici, he does it in a toadying submissive tone. When he writes to the artist Agnolo Bronzino, who has been tasked with completing Pontormo's frescoes, his tone becomes hectoring and bullying. When he writes to Michelangelo, who was Pontormo's mentor, his tone is humble and deferential.

But the person he writes to most often is his friend Vincenzo Borghini, a Benedictine priest who was an adviser, along with Vasari, to the Medici family on all matters artistic and decorative. Vasari's tone when writing to Borghini—who is helping him with the investigation—is gossipy and familiar just as you'd expect of two people today who might be drinking buddies, as these two are, and who often complain to each other the next day about their sore heads. And Borghini is good at poking fun at Vasari whenever he takes himself too seriously. The exchanges between these two friends help to make us feel we are in sixteenth-century Florence in spite of the artificiality of this story being told to us entirely through letters—some of the letters having no urgent message except to catch the reader up on the story by deliberately recalling earlier happenings and characters' names we might have forgotten.

I found myself wondering why Binet challenged himself to tell the story through letters and I can only speculate that it is because it is mainly through their writings and letters that we know anything about these famous historical figures. I haven't mentioned Binet's version of Michelangelo's letters but they are truly impressive and stand out from all the others by their eloquence and seriousness. I'm guessing Binet used 'Michelangelo: A Record of His Life as Told in His Own Letters and Papers' for research as well as Benevenuto Cellini's and Giorgio Vasari's writings.

But the title of this book may be another clue as to why Binet uses letters. Of course, on one level, the title refers to the notion of 'Perspective' that an earlier Florentine artist and architect, Leon Battista Alberti, had developed in his treatise De pictura, and which Vasari mentions in Binet's book. It was Alberti who coined the term, 'il punto di fuga' or 'vanishing point', a mathematical approach to planning a painting that helped artists create the illusion of a three dimensional scene on a two dimensional surface.
But what's interesting here is that Jacobo Pontormo was one of the first artists of the post-Alberti period to stop using Alberti's technique, which made other artists of the time, including Vasari, think him crazy and irresponsible. They felt Pontormo had literally lost all perspective and that the frescoes he was working on before his death were bound to be a failure.

But the title of Binet's book has an (s) after the word 'Perspective'. So not only is Binet possibly supporting Pontormo's vision that there's more than one way of viewing perspective, he's also giving us, via the letters in the book, many different perspectives on Pontormo's death, his extinction or vanishing point, as it were. Yes, behind all the surface pageantry of the story, Binet may be paying a serious tribute to Jacobo Pontormo who went beyond Alberti's theory of the single point of view and the importance of the vanishing point, and took painting to a new dimension.

In Pontormo's beautiful 'Deposizione' the figures are as if floating in an indeterminate space in such a way that we have more than one perspective: we can look up at the them and look down on them at the same time.
This painting is in the Church of Santa Felicita in Florence.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

English: Perspective / German: Perspektiven
In all of his novels, Binet ponders how history and reality are made up of language, and I love how he employs outrageous plots, hilarious ideas, and several meta-levels to make his points. "Perspective(s)" is a Renaissance murder mystery set in 16th century Florence which tells the story of the murder of painter Jacopo da Pontormo, who is found dead in the Basilica di San Lorenzo with a chisel in his heart. The Lord of Florence, Cosimo de' Medici, instructs his courtier Giorgio Vasari to find the perpetrator. While all of these three gentlemen really existed, it's in fact unclear how Pontormo really died, and there are no hints that he was actually murdered, but it's this very amalgamation of fact and fiction that lies at the heart of Binet's work.

Much like Les Liaisons dangereuses, the story is rendered as an epistolary novel and offers an illustration of the time and its mores. In an introduction by a certain "B.", readers are informed that the 176 letters written by 20 different senders were purchased during a trip to Tuscany and simply translated. Needless to say, the perspectives (ha!) of the renditions of the murder differ, and the language and framing of the letters depend on who writes to whom with what intention - a truth Binet, a historian, always points out when it comes to the language, focus, and framing of historical events.

Now this might sound high-concept and exhausting, but it's not: It's actually hilarious, because the senders - nobility, artists, nuns, a pope, etc. pp. - all have their own agenda, and the whole thing dishes (often historically accurate) drama like a first-rate Reddit gossip thread. In a side quest, murder victim Pontomoro's painting "Venus and Cupid" shows the head of the Lord's daughter on Venus' naked body (see the original French cover), a scandal that leads to further complications. The allegedly obscene art of the painter as well as the impact of perspective in artworks is unsurprisingly a recurring theme (as is massive shade on Dürer, Luther, the Germans in general and the Spanish).

Not the best Binet, but that's a very high bar to clear - you go to love this guy's daring storytelling.

You can listen to the podcast gang discussing the German translation Perspektiven here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

[Michael -- Justice for Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

“These are hard times for art.” – Michelangelo writing to his father in 1509

In the opening of Laurent Binet's "Perspective(s)," a man only known as "B" discovers 176 letters in a 19th-century antique shop. These letters, written by notable figures like Michelangelo and Catherine de' Medici, center around the investigation of the murder of artist Jacopo da Pontormo in 1557 Renaissance Florence. While the focus of the novel is the murder mystery storyline, it also delves into the political and religious power struggles of the era.

Jacopo da Pontormo was found dead in the chapel where he had been working, stabbed with his own chisel and struck by his own hammer. He had been creating a series of frescoes, including a controversial depiction of "Venus and Cupid," in which the face of the nude Venus had been replaced with the face of Maria de' Medici, the daughter of the Duke of Florence. This scandalous artwork created an opportunity for exploitation, potentially to humiliate the duke and his family.

Art historian Giorgio Vasari was selected to investigate the case, and there was no shortage of potential culprits. Could it have been a rival artist, fueled by envy? An individual acting on behalf of the enraged duke? Or perhaps a religious fanatic, inspired by the decrees of Pope Paul IV, who vehemently opposed the "obscene" nudity depicted in art?

The letters are generally brief, and the pace progresses without getting bogged down in details. The area of “perspective” and some art theory is explored, but this is not a technical treatise on art history. The humor is quite prevalent, with the escapades of the renegade nuns being particularly comedic. It is also amusing to see the two-faced double-crossing among the characters. While this fictitious retelling of history is not a thriller in a league with “The Name of the Rose,” it is a quick read and will compel you to check out the frescoes and architecture referred to.

“After all, there is only one noble thing upon this Earth, and that is art. Man is merely a fading stain on a wall."

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurent Binet always writes novels I want to read, whether it's about Heydrich, Atahualpa or, in this case, Michaelangelo.

This latest one is a detective story, and may not be for everyone, but for me few things are more exciting than an epistolary murder mystery set among the top politicians and artists of Renaissance Florence.

The year is 1557, Cosimo de Medici rules Florence and the painter Jacopo Pontormo is found murdered in the San Lorenzo chapel, where he had been working for ten years on frescoes that were supposed to become Florence's answer to Rome's Sixtine Chapel. In the chapel, a portrait of a nude Venus with the head of Maria de Medici, the Duke's daughter, is also found.

The Duke tasks Vasari (yes, the author of 'the Lives') with the investigation, who in turn questions a host of painters, including Michelangelo. In parallel, the queen of France Catherina de Medici and her loyal condottieri Strozzi and Benvenuto Cellini (what a character!) believe there is political gain to be had from the murder and the compromising portrait.

The novel consists of 180 short letters, which make it a propulsive and quick read.

It is full of action, it's fun to read, the research is impressive and Binet's writing is as good as ever.

Especially recommended if you love Florence!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

After all, there is only one noble thing upon this Earth, and that is art. Man is merely a fading stain on a wall.

Playful and immensely readable, this is Binet taking a mischievous side-swiping look at Renaissance Florence in 1557. Issues of history are at play here as we read through a cache of letters discovered by 'B' which tell a story that offers up a new perspective on this period that has been so well documented, explored and written about.

At the same time, this also sets up intertexts with the historical fiction genre where, it seems, everyone from Jane Austen to the Brontes, Giordano Bruno to John Milton have turned detective: here it's the turn of Giorgio Vasari (author of The Lives of the Artists) who is set on the trail of the murder of Jacopo Pontormo who, appropriately enough, was famous for his ambiguous perspectives. And if that isn't enough, Binet sprinkles in enticing side-stories: two nuns, formerly followers of Savonarola, whose antics are hilarious; the Les Liaisons Dangereuses-alike machinations of Catherine de Medici ('read this letter from Maria, which I am having copied for you. Isn't it sweet? Isn't it just delicious? Isn't it every bit as gothic as you could wish!') and her cousin Piero Strozzi involving the young Maria de Medici and her feared marriage to Hercule D'Este, Duke of Ferrara; and the call to action of a group of artisans and labourers looking for social justice via an uprising: 'a spectre haunts Italy - the spectre of the Ciompi Revolt!'

Written in epistolary mode, this is a fast read and a fun one, but I did at times feel that it doesn't fully exploit the potential of the letters of which it is comprised: most of the voices of the correspondents aren't differentiated so we do need the labels - the exceptions are Catherine de Medici, Maria de Medici and the bombastic Benvenuto Cellini who is a constant delight. What the letters do convey, however, is a sense of immediacy and the simultaneity of plots and developments as no correspondent has the full picture that we do as readers.

The sense of the politics of art is strong here: the patrons of the period, the struggles with the Pope, the nascent Protestant reform hovering around the edges. This itself gives a perspective on the touristy sense of the 'timelessness' of Florentine art, a narrative that is sometimes pushed and which points away from the way art and artists were a set of developing programmatic actors in a far more fraught and politicised arena.

This may be playful and mischievous but it also says something about the history of art and the contested rule of Florence in the mid-sixteenth century.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Because to see is to think”

For my first Binet, I got a murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence full of intriguing letters, groaning heroes, confused artists, swashbuckling scoundrels, persistent nuns, conniving Queens all in high movement. So, as they move here and there, doing this and that, we have changing perspectives, and we see, then we do not see, and then we see some more.

Brilliantly told. I really enjoyed it. It left me with such a kaleidoscope of perspectives. When does a perspective become perspectives? Because is there only one point of view or should we free ourselves from what chains us to a single position and roam about and explore different perspectives and thus come to understand more and more........... Maybe even to see that “I realise that times change, but you are not obliged to change with them.”

With pen, paper, messengers, and horses, Binet uses his letters to paint a web of communication to rival any social media frenzy of today. He engages in a dance of barbs, feints, thrusts, parries, ripostes - a finely drawn duel with many a nick where it hurts. In this case, his pen has proved mightier than the sword.

Jocopo Pontormo - Study - Group of the Dead - Last Judgement

An ARC kindly provided by the publishers via Netgalley

[Chris | Company Pants · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve spent any time amongst a group of creative people, you have no doubt witnessed the depths to which artists of any ilk will ravish each other with eloquent, twenty dollar words when in direct contact with each other, while at the same time, barely allowing them a second to fully turn away before plunging a knife fashioned from gossip, intrigue and spite into the back of their so-called peer. It’s gracious and yet altogether simple-minded of us to stand firm in the belief that the truly great artists of our time - like a da Vinci, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Michelangelo - could ever have been so bothered to traffic down in the depths with the common tea-spillers of their age, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that these men’s hands were likely filthy with the coarse and unseemly dirt of whispered gossip.

Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s), translated from its original 2023 French release by Sam Taylor, allows us a glimpse into a possible version of a series of events that took place in Florence, Italy in the sixteenth century surrounding the untimely death of Florence’s notoriously rebellious Mannerist painter, Jacopo da Pontormo. In our reality, Pontormo passed away at the age of 62 after spending nearly a decade attempting to complete his final masterpiece depicting his version of the Last Judgment on the choir frescoes of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in what was either an ode or a call to battle with Florence’s most well-known son, Michelangelo. In the reality of Perspective(s), Pontormo is found dead at the foot of his unfinished frescoes on New Year’s Day in 1557 with a massive head wound and an artist’s chisel buried in his chest in an area that fewer than five people have been allowed in for close to a decade.

What follows is an alternate reality told through 176 separate letters from twenty different sources mired in the Italian art world, the Florentine Republic, the crown of France, the Catholic church and…Michelangelo. All participants in this story are at the ready to effuse the accomplishments of their letters’ recipients with one hand while actively sketching out the blueprints of their demise with their other hand. Perspective(s) is all at once a murder mystery, a salacious gossip rag, a princess and the pauper romance, a tale of worker’s struggle and revolution, a high-minded critique of art and a deftly creative take on the death of an artist whose work was both celebrated and reviled for it’s bald-faced rejection of the artistic traditions of its era.

At the heart of Perspective(s) sits the Medici family both in the form of Duke Cosimo I de ’Medici, the head of the Florentine Republic, and his cousin Catherine de ‘Medici, the Queen of France. Much of Pontormo’s work in Florence, including the frescoes at the site of his death, were a result of Medici family patronage despite the content of Pontormo’s work having fallen out of favour with the arrival of a new papal influence in the form of Pope Paul IV. Immediately following reports of Pontormo’s death, Cosimo assigns noted art historian Giorgio Vasari to head up an investigation into his death while also commissioning Agnolo Bronzino, himself a former understudy of Pontormo, to complete the unfinished frescoes and save face for the Florentine Republic.

Vasari’s ensuing investigation drums up evidence of a secret, hidden Pontormo painting depicting the daughter of Cosimo in an deeply unflattering manner unsuitable of a ripe for marriage offspring of a Duke along with the realization that the murderer also took the time to paint over one part of Pontormo’s work on the frescoes. As the missives fly back and forth across sixteenth century Europe, the investigation deepens and it’s effects on the Florentine art scene and the government take shape as accusations and assumptions are tossed around just as casually as each of the corresponding painters seem to refer to each other as “Master”.

If the idea of a historical novel told in a series of letters that centres around the Florentine art world of the sixteenth century and it’s connections to the church and it’s benefactors in the sitting government of the time sounds dense or uninviting, I can assure you that Laurent Binet approaches this subject matter with his signature flair for language and a level of comedy that I was not prepared for. The communications between the many artists involved are a particular source of hilarity as they bounce between near masturbatory compliments of each other’s artistry and catty, damning accusations of their peers in service of throwing one of them under the bus before the same is done to them. The result is a constant moving target of a resolution to a nearly unsolvable murder whose impact has completely shaken the art world and has the potential to destabilize the reign of the Medici family in Florence and stain the reputation of the church. Binet allows his characters, wonderfully modelled on their real life counterparts, to bask in the inimitable glory of their deliciously grandiose statements that lap up the drippings from their own egos and spew them back into a world unprepared. Perspective(s) is a thoughtful and considered tale of mystery and intrigue, gift-wrapped in luscious prose with a touch of flair for the dramatic that only a true artist could convey.

Thank you to both Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of what is sure to end up as one of my favourite works of the year. And of course, thank you to Laurent for sharing the wild depths of his mind with all of us and allowing us to wrap ourselves up in his words.

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Krimi aus dem Florenz des Jahres 1557, in der Form eines Briefromans. Anfangs bereitete mir die recht lange Liste der Briefeschreibenden Sorge. Würde ich denn der Handlung überhaupt folgen können? Das konnte ich tatsächlich und das mit großem Vergnügen.

Das Vergnügen besteht vor allem in den vielen Kunstschaffenden, mit denen man konfrontiert wird. So ist der Ermittler im Mordfall niemand geringeres als Giorgio Vasari (den ich übrigens nicht gerade liebgewonnen habe, da er wohl ein ziemlicher Opportunist war), aber auch Michelangelo meldet sich in Briefen zu Wort, Bronzino spielt eine wichtige Rolle und bei dem Ermordeten handelt es sich um Jacopo Pontormo – den ich vorher nicht kannte und dessen Werke ich – wie so viele andere – parallel zur Lektüre recherchierte.

Neben dem Mord geht es um sich wandelnde Kunstauffassungen – Nacktheit ist nicht mehr gern gesehen, daher wurden einigen Figuren in der Sixtinischen Kapelle nachträglich Hosen verpasst. Dann gibt es diabolische Nonnen, die auf den Pfaden Savonarolas wandeln. Machtkämpfe und Intrigen zwischen den Medicis in Florenz, der französischen Krone (wo auch gerade eine Medici sitzt), dem Herzogtum d’Este, dem neuen Papst. Und dann auch noch Zünfte, die einen, ja, das steht da so, einen gesetzlichen Mindestlohn fordern.

Wenn dann während eines historisch verbürgten Hochwasser beschrieben wird, wie sich ein Flüchtiger auf ein Dach der Häuser auf dem Ponte Vecchio schwingt, muss man schon an actionreiche sowie wie tourismusfördernde Szenen wie in einer Dan Brown-Verfilmung denken.

Und eine Freude, die man bei Krimis ja gerne erlebt: Ich habe von Anfang an richtig getippt.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perspectives or how our artistic heroes were actually once bickering, scheming and limited humans. Bringing alive late renaissance Florence, Binet offers us a fun epistolary novel
Time will not do justice to anyone. Tomorrow’s men will be no better than today’s.

Jacopa da Pontormo is found dead. Working for over a decade on the frescoes in the San Lorenzo church for the Medici (in reality an actually quite sparsely decorated church, with the notable exception of the separate Medici chapel) his death sends shockwaves of correspondence through 16th century Italy. A new pope has just been chosen, Paul IV, former head of the inquisition, and a cold wind is blowing through the artistic landscape of Tuscany. Which coincidentally seems filled with sodomites, catamites, early communists and religious zealots. Duke Cosimo is far to be envied in trying to balance all these intrigue. Fortunately he has Vasari as his fixer.

Michelangelo, Vasari, several members of the Medici family, guild members brewing up a rebellion, the Marshal and Queen of France and many others correspond on the fate of Pontormo, struck dead by a chisel in his heart. Some conservative elements rejoice, given his scandalous mannerist nude frescoes and his identity as a sodomite.
A wild chase in over 150 letters is offered, bringing together many storylines and even a great deluge of the Arno.

I enjoyed this novel, especially as I just visited Florence, and the perspective it offers into how our artistic heroes at times might have worried about their legacy, gold and the fate of their handsome apprentices.
More thoughts to follow!

[Anika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Signora Anika an Signora Meike

Werte, geschätzte Freundin,

ihr wisst, wie sehr ich eurem Urteil in literarischen Belangen vertraue, und einmal mehr bin ich froh, eurem untrüglichem Rat gefolgt zu sein um mich mit der Kunst des L.B. vertraut zu machen. Diese Geschichte, frivol und aufregend zugleich, hat mich nicht nur kurzweilig unterhalten, sondern gleichermaßen entzückt! Welch' Kreativität, welch' sprachliches Geschick sich mir hier in zahlreichen Briefen unterschiedlichster Korrespondenz offenbart hat! Ich danke euch für diese Empfehlung, die mir unvergessene Mußestunden beschert hat.

Eure euch stets treu ergebene A.

tl;dr: Gefährliche Liebschaften meets Assassin's Creed - what's not to love?

Mehr zum Buch in unserer ausführlichen Besprechung @ Papierstau Podcast: #321: D(e)ad Jokes

[Ярослава · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heartfelt thanks to NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Binet had my undivided attention at "an epistolary murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence where the greats of art history (Michelangelo, Bronzino, Vasari et al.) investigate the murder of their colleague." Pontormo, a painter of stunning frescoes that stretched the boundaries of what was considered permissible, as well as of some lascivious political satire that was definitely beyond the pale, is found dead in a church he was decorating. What did him in? Was it a rivalry with another ambitious artist? That does not narrow down the list of possible suspects for our amateur sleuths during an era when now-canonical artists seemed to have outnumbered every other demographic group in Florence. Was it all that provocative nudity and fleshiness of his frescoes in cruel times for the defenders of art and beauty, in a Florence that still remembered Savonarola and could feel the reverberations of that fanaticism? Was it Pontormo's anti-Medici sentiment in an era when Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici was vying for the Tuscan crown, the Queen of France would stop at nothing to thwart him, and Cosimo's daughter, an important pawn in his political scheming, acted like a normal teenager and wanted nothing more than a romantic adventure? Or maybe it was something else entirely, like the bubbling social discontent among the disenfranchised workers and artists' apprentices?

Of course, the whodunit aspect does not quite focus on the question of who killed the painter. The main question that the artists/sleuths confront while looking for a killer is something like "who gets to set the rules of seeing and representing the world?" What we see (and what we can represent) is dependent on what is knowable, and how we process that knowledge. Linear perspective, which puts the subjectivity of the observer at the center when representing the world, is not just an artistic convention; it has farther-reaching epistemological and possibly theological implications. At the same time, it never stops being a fun romp with art heists, obstinate nuns, A+ political manipulations, and self-serving jerks of all stripes.

I'm probably more fond of Binet's HHhH, which uses the historical assassination of Reinhard Heydrich as a pretext to consider the limitations of historical knowledge and the ethics of its renditions in fiction, but Perspective(s) sure was a very enjoyable read, well translated and very neatly constructed (for example, I really liked how the plot starts with the painted flood and ends with a real flood!). If you are into art or historical whodunits, it will probably make you happy too!

[Albert Marsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a ton of fun. You don't get a whole lot of straightforward swashbuckling novels anymore. And erudite too

[Marius Citește · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un roman istoric epistolar plasat în Florența secolului al XVI-lea, alcătuit din scrisori schimbate între personaje marcante precum Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Bronzino și Giorgio Vasari, Cosimo de Medici, soția sa, Eleonora de Toledo și fiica sa, Maria, Caterina de Medici, regina Franței.
Optând pentru forma romanului epistolar, autorul da cărții un ritm alert. Acesta spune povestea uciderii pictorului Jacopo da Pontormo, care este găsit mort în Bazilica San Lorenzo cu o daltă înfiptă în inimă.
O combinație reușită între roman istoric, thriller și literatură de calitate.

[Frey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je lis deux romans en même temps sur les Médicis et je me suis beaucoup amusée à faire les comparaisons entre la fiction, le réel, ce qui était supputé, vrai, questionné et inventé dans chacune des oeuvres.

J'ai un petit faible pour les romans épistolaires, je trouve qu'ils apportent - souvent - une petite fraicheur dans l'écriture et permettent de faire la part belle à de nombreux points de vue différents sans que ça ne soit étrange ou mal avenu. J'ai passé un bon moment, je ne dirais pas que j'ai été emportée par l'intrigue, ni que l'enquête m'a passionnée, mais le côté très réel, très cru et terre à terre de pas mal des lettres m'ont bien amusée.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a real mixed bag. The set up is typically mischievous from Binet - he was apparently seduced into buying a collection of old letters while on holiday in Florence. Upon reading them, he found they dated from 1557 and concerned the apparent murder of the great artist, Pontormo. This unspools a tale of mystery, murder, and scheming at the heart of the Florentine court.

Exuberant, fun, and peopled with a wide cast of colourful characters, this is undoubtedly enjoyable and audacious. My only concern is that it gets a bit repetitive and there's probably not enough of a story to fill nearly 300 pages.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll have a longer review soon, but for now: run, don't walk. This one's brilliant.

[nettebuecherkiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 Sterne. Was für ein Spaß!

[Jeroen Decuyper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Als fan van het eerste uur, reeds sinds HHhH, De zevende functie van taal en Beschavingen, moest ook deze nieuwste van Laurent Binet onvermijdelijk op de leesstapel belanden. Net als zijn vorige roman situeert hij zijn verhaal in de zestiende eeuw, in tegenstelling tot zijn twee eerste romans die hij in de twintigste eeuw laat plaatsvinden. De actie speelt zich hoofdzakelijk af in Florence tijdens de Renaissance, onder het bewind van de familie De' Medici. Het boek schrikte me bij aanvang af, enerzijds door het feit dat een briefroman betrof, anderzijds door de lange lijst met personages die Binet meegeeft met de lezer vooraleer aan het verhaal te beginnen.

Enige humor is de Franse auteur trouwens niet vreemd: hij vermeldt fijntjes dat hij wellicht de intelligentie van de lezer onderschat, maar dat hij tóch de moeite zal doen om de belangrijkste personages en hun functie in het verhaal mee te geven. Waarna hij dus een nagenoeg exhaustieve lijst van alle hoofpersonages neerpent.

In Perspectieven lijkt de lezer die personages telkens een stap voor te zijn. Maar niets is wat het lijkt: de feiten blijken net iets anders te zijn dan gedacht. Alles draait om perspectief: hoe je iets bekijkt, bepaalt wat je ziet. Vanuit dit uitgangspunt vertelt Binet het verhaal van de dood van de kunstenaar Jacopo da Pontormo, die tijdens het werken aan zijn laatste meesterwerk, een gigantische fresco in Florence, om het leven komt. In Binets versie is de dood van de kunstenaar geen ongeluk, maar moord.

Het 'hoofdperspectief' in dit moordmysterie is dat van Giorgio Vasari, zelf kunstenaar en biograaf, die door Cosimo de' Medici wordt gevraagd de moord te onderzoeken zonder veel ophef te veroorzaken. Wat volgt is een spannende roman waarin fictie en werkelijkheid door elkaar lopen. De personages proberen de feiten te interpreteren, maar hun versies blijken telkens net niet te kloppen of bijgestuurd te worden door info die in een volgende brief mondjesmaat wordt vrijgegeven.

Ondertussen ontspint zich een complex web van intriges: de hertogelijke dochter Maria dreigt weg te lopen richting la douce France met haar minnaar, een schunnig schilderij wordt gestolen en er wordt gerommeld met Pontormo’s laatste kunstwerk. Dit alles terwijl de koningin van Frankrijk achter de schermen haar macht en intriges lijkt uit te oefenen.

Perspectieven is een virtuoze brievenroman, waarin meer dan tien personages elkaar schrijven in meer dan 150 brieven en steeds nieuwe details onthullen. Deze brieven zijn kort en krachtig, wat het verhaal snelheid geeft. Hoewel ze soms iets té perfect zijn en de auteur geen onderscheid maakt qua stijl bij de verschillende personages, wat ook hun afkomst is, blijft het verhaal boeien. Een aangename en intrigerende lectuur.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

PERSPECTIVE(S) Our storyteller, while vacationing in Tuscany, purchases a bundle of dusty old letters from an antique shop. They tell a fantastical tale.

Set in 1557 Renaissance Florence Italy, the artist Jacopo da Pontormo is found dead in the chapel of San Lorenzo. He had almost completed the beautiful frescoes that he had been commissioned to paint by Cosimo de’ Medici, Duke of Florence. They are said to rival the artwork of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. What follows is the unraveling of a complex murder mystery, lead by famous author Giorgio Vasari. To complicate matters, a distorted and compromising portrait of the Duke’s young daughter, Maria, is discovered and is being used for political blackmail.

Filled with palace and political intrigue, the story is told entirely through the correspondence among an eclectic cast of royals, artists, assistants, rebels, nuns and even Pope Paul IV. Each of the 176 letters is a page or two and it is written in a current, easy to read style. Drama, humor, and salacious details add to the historical background making this a fun and educational read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Laurent Binet, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een Middeleeuwse moord in het Florence van de 16e eeuw zet de spanningen op scherp. Wie heeft de schilder van enkele vermaarde fresco's vermoord? Via verschillende brieven word je als lezer vanaf de zijlijn in het verhaal gezogen. Met veel artistieke bravoure en bombastisch taalgebruik word je deelgenoot van de verschillende facties en politieke gebeurtenissen in Florence van die tijd. Het verhaal toverde een glimlach op mijn gezicht. Deze roman is zeker een aanrader.

[Ief Stuyvaert · Rating 4 out of 5]

175 brieven volgen op die ene.

Die ene die alles in gang zet, maar die je pas helemaal op het einde te lezen krijgt: “O, meester! Het is zover. De tijd is voor mij gekomen om mijn schuld te vereffenen.”

We schrijven - letterlijk en figuurlijk - 1 januari 1557.

Plaat van handeling is Florence, een smeltkroes waarin hartstochten borrelen, kunsten floreren, waarin genieën excelleren, maar vervolgens worden verjaagd.

Michelangelo is een van hen.

Al tien jaar zwoegt hij - met verwrongen nek, hoofd achterover - aan het wereldberoemde fresco in de Sixtijnse Kapel, verbannen door de De’ Medici.

De andere personages - briefschrijvers - zijn koningen, hertogen, pausen, nonnen, schilders, konkelaars en andere etterbakken.

Hun brieven vliegen over en weer, heen en terug, zijn hartstochtelijk, beschouwelijk, verderfelijk, samenzweerderig - maar bovenal meeslepend.

Bacchanalen, martelingen, vechtpartijen en achtervolgingen, ontsnappingen, sodomitische nachten - alle worden ze met zwier aan papier of perkament toevertrouwd.

Pennentrek na pennentrek, verfstreek per verfstreek, kom je te weten wat er die fatale nieuwjaarsnacht in de kapel van San Lorenzo is gebeurd, telkens vanuit een ander - euh - perspectief.

Tot die ene brief dus.

Die vroeger komt dan je denkt.

[Iryna Chernyshova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Епістолярний середньовічний детектив. Тут тобі і дивне вбивство живописця в церкві, і пошуки непристойної картини, і кохання, і жадоба власті, і трохи крутійства і загравань з читачем. Неймдропінг персонажів вражаючий. Ну так, симпатично, але для мене чомусь без wow-ефекту.

[Fransien Vandeweghe · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 *

[Nona · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I've had so much fun with a book and learned new things while reading it. "Perspective(s)" really ticked all my boxes. It's a historical fiction based on real people, placed in Florence out of all cities (one of my favorite places I've visited), in the art world. At first impression, you'd think it's a fluff murder mystery set in the Renaissance, but there's so much to unpack!

The story begins in Florence, in the mid-16th century, with the suspicious death of the painter Jacopo Pontormo, whose body is found at the site of his unfinished frescoes in the San Lorenzo chapel. The murder becomes the center around which Binet builds the vivid image of Renaissance society.

It's an epistolary novel from beginning to end. Every chapter is a letter, written by or to historical figures of the Florentine Renaissance (Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari, Cellini, Michelangelo, Caterina de Medici and others). The letters follow one another chronologically, forming a surprisingly fluid narrative, the result being a fast-paced historical thriller that reads like an action movie. We are called to piece together the truth from these letters, filled with conflicting testimonies.

The mystery becomes even more interesting when a painting of Venus, modeled after Cosimo de Medici's daughter Maria, goes missing. This painting serves as an excuse for Binet to take us on a journey through Florence's politics and rivalry with Caterina de Medici's France. So, it's not only a mystery novel, it's also a history lesson.

All of the novel's protagonists are real historical figures, reimagined by Binet in a playful tone. Michelangelo, Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari and Cellini are names I've come across in art history books and museums, and the author gives them life and places them in the middle of conspiracies and fights for power and recognition. The painters oscillate between artistic idealism and petty jealousy. This novel sent me down an ADHD rabbit hole researching these people and their art. I was saddened to discover that Pontormo's frescoes from the San Lorenzo chapel were eventually destroyed, and very little of his art remains to this day. On the other hand, I appreciated that Binet included sister Plautilla Nelli, a nun-artist and the first ever known female Renaissance painter of Florence. Many female painters of those times have been forgotten, their art destroyed or attributed to men, so it's important to bring them back to our attention.

Out of all the characters, my favorites were Giorgio Vasari (and I really need to find a copy of his book somewhere), who is depicted here mainly as an enforcer for the duke of Florence rather than an artist, and Caterina de Medici, the Queen of France, an early "power woman" of European politics, manipulative and strategic. My only issue with characterization is with the sameness of the voices. Despite the diversity of correspondents, the letters sound too similar and I would have struggled to tell the authors apart had it not been for the headings mentioning who writes to whom.

I think art is, however, the true protagonist of "Perspective(s)". The author takes us on a debate between beauty and morality, touching on the "indecency" of nudes and the Church's authority over images. All these were real controversies during the Renaissance, even Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings were not exempt from censorship.

Binet's prose is elegant, detailed, and doesn't lack irony. The letter format gives the thrill of reading private confessions mixed with historical reconstruction. I loved the way he built the atmosphere of Florence; it took me back to the days I spent in the city and reminded me of Palazzo Pitti, the Uffizi, the Duomo. It's incredible that I got to walk in the halls and rooms where all those people lived all those centuries ago and see the buildings that were just being built and decorated during the time evoked in the novel. There were moments when the book read like a Renaissance noir, with secret plots and cinematic chases through the city.

The underlying detective story is just a pretext for an art and history lesson, complete with philosophical observations on the meaning of representation and the limits of censorship in art. It made me go back to one of my passions, Renaissance art, and sparked a desire to lose myself in the Uffizi once more.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Florence in 1557, painter Jacopo da Pontormo is found dead in a church, stabbed through the heart with a chisel. He had spent over a decade painting the church’s frescoes. His home is searched, and a scandalous painting of Maria de' Medici is found, portraying her as a nude Venus. Art historian Giorgio Vasari is asked to investigate. The narrative is framed as a discovery of 180 letters by a mysterious figure called “B.” who visits a Tuscan antique shop in the nineteenth-century.

The letters were exchanged among (real) historical figures of the day. The correspondence reveals political scheming, speculation about the killer, and debates about morality. The novel addresses enduring questions about art: who controls representation, the role of the observer, and whether any single viewpoint can serve as an ultimate authority. I found this book very enjoyable. It is beautifully written and entertaining. It looks at questions about art and power under the guise of a well-constructed whodunnit.

[Wal.li · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tod eines Künstlers

Anfang des Jahres 1557 wird der Maler Jacopo da Pontormo in Florenz erstochen aufgefunden. Er war seit Jahren mit einem Fresko beschäftigt, welches, wie festgestellt wird, teilweise übermalt wurde. Gleichzeitig wird ein Gemälde vermisst, dass die Tochter des Herzogs Cosimo de Medici zeigen soll. Eine unangenehme Situation für den Herzog, denn die weibliche Person auf dem Bild ist nicht bekleidet. Pontormo war im Auftrag des Herzogs tätig. Hat die Sache mit dem Bild etwa mit dem unnatürlichen Ableben des Künstlers zu tun? Es entspinnt sich ein reger Briefverkehr, mit dem die Beteiligten ihre Gedanken zu den Vorgängen teilen.

Briefromane kommen eher selten vor. In der Renaissance gab es jedoch hauptsächlich die Möglichkeit, sich persönlich zu treffen, oder wenn die Entfernung zu groß war, eben zu schreiben oder einen Boten zu schicken. Zur Aufhellung des Geschehens dienen die Briefe, die die verschiedenen Personen austauschen. Dabei entwickelt sich auch ein Bild der Machtstrukturen in Florenz und auch der persönlichen Gefüge zwischen den verschiedenen Menschen. So ist Cosimo nicht nur Herzog, sondern auch Vater. Seine Tochter Maria soll verheiratet werden. Wundert sich der Vater, dass sie davon nicht begeistert ist. Ihr ein Mitspracherecht zuzugestehen wäre im 16. Jahrhundert wohl zu viel erwartet, oder?

Diese Hörbuchproduktion wird zur Verfügung gestellt durch die ARD-Audiothek als szenische Lesung, was sie soweit feststellbar von dem normalen Hörbuch unterscheidet: Jeder Briefeschreiber liest seine Briefe „selbst“ vor, hat also einen eigenen Sprecher. Das macht das Zuhören sehr abwechslungsreich und man kommt teilweise soweit, dass man einige der Schreiber wiedererkennt. Das ist echt klasse. Hoffentlich wird diese Produktion noch über weitere Kanäle zur Verfügung gestellt. Ob die geringfügige Kürzung durch die Art des Vortrags bedingt ist, kann nicht mit Sicherheit gesagt werden. Die Vorleser der Briefe werden im letzten Abschnitt mit ihrer Rollenbezeichnung genannt, was sehr angenehm ist.

Auch inhaltlich überzeugt dieser Roman, besonders auch, wenn man feststellt, dass es sich bei etlichen der handelnden Personen um historische Persönlichkeiten handelt, über die man im www nachlesen kann. Sehr geschickt hat der Autor die Wirklichkeit als Rahmen für seine fiktionalen Gedanken verwendet. Die Aufklärung des Mordes wird zu einer verwickelten Geschichte, in der es zu dem ein oder anderen Schelmenstreich kommt. Doch auch tragische Momente hat man als Leser oder Leserin zu überstehen. Und mitunter sind Todesfälle unerwartet und durchaus von Gewalt bestimmt. Und während kleiner Augenblicke hätte man sich gewünscht, der Autor hätte die Wirklichkeit außen vor gelassen. Aber alles in allen hat man einen herausragenden historischen Kriminalroman, der sowohl durch Inhalt als auch Darstellung besticht.

4,5 Sterne

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurent Binet’s new novel, Perspective(s), is a criss-crossing, polyphonic thing—a chatty, omnidirectional epistolary novel set against the politically turbulent backdrop of sixteenth-century Florence. Most of the novel's characters are recognizably historical, and the nearly two hundred letters that fly between them reconstruct an entire milieu: from Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleanor of Toledo to Michelangelo, Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, and several of the artist’s apprentices, everyone crops up to have their say—and they have a lot to say: their restless communications circle the body of a dead man, and, like Murder on the Orient Express, this murder mystery's narrative swerves—it constantly shifts perspective—to make a suspect out of each of them.

The novel begins on the first of January, 1557, in an Italy still awash with the fading glory of the High Renaissance. Leonardo and Raphael are dead—no mystery there—but Michelangelo remains at work on the dome at St. Peter’s in Rome (a bit fearful that the new pope might decide to vandalize his Sistine ceiling). In Florence, however, forget God: it’s the Medici who rule with complete power, and the ever-scheming duke has his eye on a strategic marriage for his daughter, Maria.

But when one of his best artists, a man named Pontormo, is found dead in the chapel of San Lorenzo (a sculptor’s chisel buried in his heart), it isn’t the unfinished state of his frescoes that disturbs the duke. No, the problem is another artwork, one that Pontormo actually did finish. Inexplicably, days before he died, he’d taken it upon himself to paint a portrait of the duke’s daughter—the same one positioned now for marriage—scandalously mounting her face on the body of a nude Venus. Worse, the painting has vanished. ...

Read the rest of the review at my site (and feel free to submit your own review!): https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/04/2...

[Alix · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is told in an epistolary format, which isn’t my favorite and honestly, I found it pretty tiring. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but thankfully, there’s a character list included for reference.

Set in Florence in 1557, a time when things were shifting toward conservatism, the story explores the censorship of art, such as the growing disapproval of nude paintings. Even masterpieces like Michelangelo’s were being altered or covered up. Against this backdrop, the book delves into the gruesome murder of an artist and the mystery surrounding his defilement of a painting.

Through the letters, we get glimpses of scheming, shared clues, rich discussions of art, and insight into the religious and political tensions in Italy. As the title suggests, the story plays heavily with the idea of perspective. The mystery’s reveal was surprising, but it felt a bit anticlimactic since it was revealed through letters and not in a more dramatic way.

I also struggled with the prose since It’s quite dense and wordy. Combined with the slow pace and epistolary structure, it made it hard for me to stay engaged. I really wanted to like this book because the premise is unique, but in the end, it just didn’t quite work for me.