The Phantoms of the Louvre

Bilal’s works from the 1980s, such as The Carnival of Immortals, and his later work referencing the Bosnian War (Appointment in Paris) established him as one of Europe’s greatest graphic sci-fi authors. His distinctive dark artistry and flamboyant imagination are equally apparent in this book, although it lacks the strong narrative element of his other works. Each chapter features a single historical protagonist (usually a model for one of the masterpieces in the Louvre), and Bilal furnishes them all with biographies in which fiction and truth intermingle, creating his own fantastic reality. The themes are often artistic in nature, involving subjects like color, as with the fictional Analia Avellaneda’s development of a stunning green pigment used by El Greco or the potent red ochre magically harnessed by a seafaring, blue-eyed Senegalese beauty. With even more heavy symbolism than usual, Bilal’s pseudo-historical ghosts come to life in this captivating volume, an imagined secret history of the world’s most famous works of art. (June)