THREE MORE GREAT ARTISTS IN FICTION

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier (1999) IIn this reconstruction oof the world reflected iin the golden age of DDutch painting, Tracy CChevalier cleverly ttakes a well-known ppainting by Vermeer anda provides a story to explain the enigmatic woman who appears in it. Griet is 16 when she arrives in Vermeer’s household and is slowly drawn, despite the difference in age and social class, into an increasingly intimate relationship with her master, eventually coming to act as his muse and his model. The Passion of Artemisia Susan Vreeland (2002) SSusan Vreeland’s nnovel vividly recreates tthe turbulent life oof the early baroque ppainter Artemisia GGentileschi. From tthe high points of herh career under the patronage of the Medicis to the tragedies of her rape by a colleague and her torture by the Inquisition, this is the story of a woman who struggled bravely to assert her individuality. In this powerful work of invented autobiography, Vreeland creates a memorable portrait of a pioneering female artist. The Painter of Souls Peter Kazan (2015) WWhen this rich and ccolourful novel opens, FFilippo Lippi is a street uurchin in Renaissance FFlorence, possessed oof an untutored talent forf drawing. Taken in by a religioureligious order and trained to be a Carmelite friar, he cannot repress his desire for the beauties of the world and his urge to depict them. Apprenticed to the great 15th- century painter Masaccio, he must struggle to reconcile the conflicting demands of the godly and the artistic life.