Quattrocento

I wasn't sure what to make of this one. There were many individual elements I enjoy, the Rinascimento, Italian culture generally, time travel, and some poetic and lyrical language, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts, and there was no clear narrative sense or explanation for the central character's temporal wanderings. The romantic element was moving though.

Interesting marriage of art, art history, music theory, time traveling and a true sense of the word "Romantic". Matt, an accomplished art restorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is drawn to the "studiolo" room within the museum - a room of three dimensional effects on all walls through the use of "intarsia" (inlaid wood) - where he finds peace and a strong draw to another world. As he restores a renaissance painting of a beautiful woman, he is drawn into her world through dream...or was it real?
Definitely an interesting juxtaposition of science fiction and Renaissance Florence with a lost art restorer. Does he find his way? You decide.

In general, I enjoyed this tale of time-travel and art history set in modern-day New York City and fifteenth-century Tuscany. The glimpses behind the scenes of the art world are interesting, the story of Matt's obsession with a woman depicted in an old painting is very romantic and intriguing, and there's just enough danger thrown in to keep everything mysterious and exciting. But I sometimes had trouble with the time-warp elements of the story – the main character would just suddenly fade out of one setting and appear in the other. There seemed to be a suggestion that the time displacement had to do with vanishing points and certain sounds or vibrations, but I would have welcomed a little more explanation of why or how it all show more occurred. Also, Matt seems to fit into that Renaissance world a little too easily, even for someone who's spent most of his career studying its art and culture. Things happen very quickly and without much explanation in that past world – one minute Matt is just encountering Anna for the first time, they have a brief conversation about a painting, and suddenly they're soul mates sharing rather intimate moments in her private studio. Would a woman from an aristocratic Italian family have behaved so freely with a stranger in fifteenth century Italy? I think it's doubtful.

The book is a pretty fast read, although I found the prose style a little hard to wade through at times. McKean has obviously done a huge amount of research on art and the history and culture of Renaissance Italy, and it shows – but sometimes not in a good way. A lot of the discussions about art begin to sound like study notes, after a while. McKean is actually a musician and instrument-maker, and the book includes some discussions of music which are probably fascinating to other musicians, but seemed a little dry to me.

But as I said, even with these reservations I still enjoyed the book. It was McKean's first novel, so I'm hoping for better things in the future. He's definitely a writer worth a second try. show less

This book was in some ways a disappointment - the 3 stars are purely for the wonderful descriptions of paintings, music and 15th century science, which are very well done. Clearly the author knows a lot about art of the period, unfortunately he doesn't know how to spin a good story. There is next to no character development and the storyline isn't convincing or engaging. It's a great idea, but poorly executed.

This is a very uneven book. There are scenes that are absolutely beautiful. When describing art and Matt sinking into the love of art shines through.Other parts are very clunking. Somethings also make absolutely no sense.

This was okay, but a bit confusing at times and extremely slow at the start of the book.

Art Curator from NYC travels back in time due to installation of room from that time period into current museum.