Art Fiction: No Holds Barred!
Explore 'Art Fiction: No Holds Barred!'—a curated list of banned and challenged fiction books. Discover controversial reads and the stories behind their censorship.
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The Lady and the Unicorn
by Tracy Chevalier
Interweaves historical fact with fiction to explore the mystery behind the creation of the remarkable Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven at the end of the fifteenth century, which today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris.
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Caravaggio
by Christopher Peachment
This novel is a poignant and spirited journey into the mind and underbelly ofa creative genius and the violent world that inspired his paintings.
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The Birth of Venus
by Sarah Dunant
Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family's Florentine palazzo.
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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The Passion of Artemisia
by Susan Vreeland
A novel set against the backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa recreates the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, whose search for love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art led to her fame as a painter.
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Rembrandt's Whore
by Sylvie Matton
A monologue of Hendrickje Stoffels, the woman with whom the great artist, Rembrandt lived for the last twenty years of his life.
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Carnevale
by M. R. Lovric
1782. The 13-year old daughter of a Venetian merchant family is lured naked from her bath by a stray cat and finds herself in the arms of Casanova - the legendary seducer of women. Twenty-five years later Cecilia is in Albania, now a portrait painter of some renown, her fame in this area eclipsed only by her reputation as the last woman in Venice to have been loved by Casanova. Enter a young man from England, a troubled poet, looking for adventure at any price - a man who begins his affair with Cecilia with the announcement 'I rather look on love as a hostile transaction.' For Cecilia, who had blossomed under the tender, unselfish love of another man, Byron proves a rude awakening. While Casanova hid nothing from her, Byron hides everything, but she paints rich portraits of both men. This unique and extraordinary novel combines sensuous descriptions of painting with rich portraits of real people, all set against the decaying grandeur of Venice.
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The Painted Kiss
by Elizabeth Hickey
In the tradition of "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" and "The Girl in Hyacinth Blue," a beautiful, atmospheric, and sensual debut re-imagines the tempestuous relationship between painter Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floege, the youngest daughter of a bourgeois businessman.