JAMES TWINING
The Gilded Seal
To Amelia and Jemima
‘When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies’
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
This novel was inspired by the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 and its eventual recovery in 1913, an event which triggered one of the largest criminal investigations in history and to which the Mona Lisa owes much of her present-day fame.
All descriptions and background information provided on works of art, artists, thefts, forgery detection techniques and architecture are similarly accurate. Unfortunately, the Claremont Riding Academy, which is briefly featured in this novel, announced its closure shortly before publication, but the description was left unchanged as a tribute to the sad passing of a much loved New York landmark.
For more information on the author and on the fascinating history, people, places and artefacts that feature in The Gilded Seal and the other Tom Kirk novels, please visit www.jamestwining.com
Extract from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)
Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife.
In this head, whoever wished to see how closely art could imitate nature, was able to comprehend it with ease; for in it were counterfeited all the minutenesses that with subtlety are able to be painted…
…The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its opening, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. And, indeed, it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant craftsman, be he who he may, tremble and lose heart.
And in this work of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvellous, since the reality was not more alive.
The Washington Post, 13th December 1913
Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s great painting, which was stolen from the Louvre, in Paris, more than two years ago, has been found [and a man arrested]. It is now in the hands of the Italian authorities and will be returned to France.
Mona Lisa or La Joconde as it is more properly known, the most celebrated portrait of a woman ever painted, has been the object of an exhaustive search in all quarters of the globe. The mystery of its abstraction from the Louvre, its great intrinsic value, and the fascination of the smile of the woman it portrayed … have combined to keep alive interest in its recovery.
On being interrogated, the prisoner said his real name is Vincenzo Peruggia…‘I was ashamed,’ he said ‘that for more than a century no Italian had thought of avenging the spoliation committed by Frenchmen under Napoléon when they carried off from the Italian museums and galleries, pictures, statues and treasures of all kinds by wagonloads, ancient manuscripts by thousands, and gold by sacks.’
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