cover image Gino, the Countess and Chagall

Gino, the Countess and Chagall

Leonard Lamensdorf. Seascape Press Ltd., $24.95 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-9669741-6-4

In this name-dropping bodice-ripper for art enthusiasts and Italophiles, na ve yet talented Italian peasant Gianpaolo Bondone rises to fame and fortune in the Paris art world. Returning to his childhood home near Florence at the end of his service in WWII, Gino envisions a return to his simple life of farming and leatherworking at the local monastery. Instead, he finds his fascist father murdered by partisans and his sister deflowered by Pietro Scegli, a member of the Black Shirts. Tortured by dreams of the war, Gino seeks help from the prior of the local monastery, who arranges for Gino's apprenticeship with a master artist in Florence. Love affairs there and in Paris ensue. Gino's painting waxes and wanes with each new twist in his life. With the help of such luminaries as Chagall and Picasso, Gino learns what it takes to be a true artist. Lamensdorf (author of The Crouching Dragon, a young adult novel) writes a rollicking, if shallow, travelogue and art history saga. A voluptuous, romance-novel-style jacket and equally lusty blurbs from, among others, Fran Halpern of NPR may alert readers to a lighthearted airplane read. (Nov.)