The Lost Painting

In Harr's THE LOST PAINTING, the main character is neither male nor female, but is a 400-year-old painting known as THE TAKING OF CHRIST. The story follows multiple quests to uncover its history and to discover the original painting. Campbell Scott pulls the listener into the search by bringing Harr's vivid details to life. His descriptions of Italian life in the 1600s and the adventures of the characters are easily portrayed by Scott. As listeners partake of the story, they venture down multiple paths in the long life of the painting. With Scott's delivery, it's easy to understand how some listeners will get hooked on this heroic journey. R.B.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

October 3, 2005
Given the relative obscurity of 16th-century the Italian baroque master and all-around creative bad boy Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who after a flare of fame remained relatively unknown from his death until the 1950s, the 1992 discovery of the artist's missing painting The Taking of Christ
understandably stirred up a frenzy in academic circles. Harr's skillful and long-awaited follow-up to 1997's A Civil Action
provides a finely detailed account of the fuss. While contoured brush strokes and pentimenti repaints have little to do with the toxic waters and legalese Harr dissected in his debut, the author writes comfortably about complex artistic processes and enlivens the potentially tedious details of artistic restoration with his lively and articulate prose. Broken into short, succinct chapters, the narrative unfolds at a brisk pace, skipping quickly from the perspective of 91-year-old Caravaggio scholar Sir Denis Mahon to that of young, enterprising Francesca Cappelletti, a graduate student at the University of Rome researching the disappearance of The Taking of Christ
. The mystery ends with Sergio Benedetti, a restorer at the National Gallery of Ireland, who ultimately discovers the lost, grime-covered masterpiece in a house owned by Jesuit priests. But while adept at coordinating dates and analyzing hairline fractures in aged paint, Harr often seems overly concerned with the step-by-step process of tracking down The Taking of the Christ
, as if the specific artist who created it were irrelevant. Granted, Harr is not an art historian, but his lack of artistic analysis of Caravaggio's paintings may frustrate readers who wish to know more about the naturalistic Italian's works.