Word: caravaggio
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NONFICTION: Alex, the Life of a Child, Frank Deford -The Caravaggio Conspiracy, Peter Watson Characters and Their Landscapes, Ronald Blythe -The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin - Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, Phyllis Rose -A Warsaw Diary: 1978-81, Kazimierz Brandys
...CARAVAGGIO CONSPIRACY by Peter Watson Doubleday; 321 pages...
...previous night, however, intruders had forced a shutter of one of the chapel windows. Once inside, they cut away the altarpiece with a razor blade and marched out the front door with their prize: an 8-ft. by 7-ft. canvas, the Nativity, painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1609. The uninsured masterwork was valued at $3 million...
...years later, when British Journalist Peter Watson set out to find the painting, Italian authorities had long since written it off. The Caravaggio Conspiracy is Watson's enthralling account of that search, which led him perilously deep into the byways of the international art underworld. Among the astonishing facts he uncovered is that most art thefts are pulled off with as little difficulty as the Caravaggio caper in Palermo. In Italy alone, 44,000 works of art disappear each year. Indeed, during Watson's dogged investigation, enough masterpieces were purloined from churches, galleries and private homes to furnish...
...decided to pose as Art Dealer "John Blake," with an interest in 17th century Italian painting, pretending to have many rich clients and no moral scruples. Once word of his corruptibility got around the art world, Watson reckoned, he would be offered stolen pictures, including, some day, the Caravaggio...