Murder at the National Gallery
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Mystery & Detective › General
ISBN: 0679435301 / Publisher: Random House, July 1996
During the mounting of a prestigious exhibition at the National Gallery featuring a newly discovered painting by Caravaggio, Mac and Annabel Smith are drawn into a high-stakes international art world in which obsession can lead to murder
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What happens when a world-class art expert wants not only to exhibit a long-lost painting by Caravaggio but to own it himself?Margaret Truman takes us into a heady, exciting world of genius with this story of a senior curator at the nation's famed National Gallery of Art who plans a brilliant exhibition around the masterpiece. He also begins to make another, more personal, daring plan. His masterly scheme promises prestige, fame, a small fortune, plus a number of artful deceptions - and a disappearing act that will rival the story of the painting itself.But things intervene in the form of a demanding son, a more demanding and ambitious mistress, an unscrupulous collector, persons suddenly dead, and the fact the Annabel Reed-Smith is asked by her ex-college roommate, now the vice president's wife, to keep an eye on things at the Gallery and the coming exhibition.Murder at the National Gallery is a look inside one of the nation's premier art institutions. It also shows us what goes into the mounting of a major exhibition, involving international trade (legal and otherwise), Customs and customs, government, and art authorities. It provides an up-close portrait of art theft, smuggling, and forgery in several places, including Italy, where they are among the nation's major industries.
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