Dimensions
157 x 221 x 28mm
"The life of the Spanish master Vel zquez, a painter who spent almost all his career immured in the Madrid court, is interwoven with that of John Snare, a nineteenth-century printer and bookseller from Reading, who gave everything to own a portrait of a royal prince by the artist, but whose passion for his picture would lead him to ruin and exile. As Observer art critic Laura Cumming tracks the lives of Vel zquez and Snare (the details of which are scant and elusive) she finds herself on the scent of Snare's lost portrait by the Spanish painter and makes a most surprising discovery The Vanishing Man is an innovative dual biography that becomes an unexpected detective story. Travelling from the Spanish and Papal courts of the seventeenth century via the courtrooms of nineteenth-century Edinburgh and the garrets of Manhattan, it is a gripping depiction of how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. Most movingly, it is an evocation of some of the greatest paintings of all time by an author who is an eloquent and passionate admirer, and brings us closer to the creation and appreciation of Vel zquez's works than ever before."
