Beauty and betrayal, on canvas

REVIEWS BY ALISON HOOD

Things are seldom what they seem, or so the saying goes. This theme inhabits three new books that focus on the subjective, shadowed and often capricious world of art, artists' lives and their creations.

A well-known epigram says that revenge is a dish best served cold. This is evident in the elaborate schemes of Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren, as revealed in Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer. A journalist and translator, Wynne blends reportorial skill with a love of irony to tell van Meegeren's life story, the saga of a frustrated, paranoid and drug-addicted 20th-century artist who "was born to be a painter; unfortunately, he was fifty years too late."

Van Meegeren wanted desperately to be an artist. Though his autocratic father routinely destroyed his sketchbooks, he pursued his dream via secret tutelage by a school friend's artist father. By the time he departed to study architecture in Delft, he was well-schooled in the methods of the Dutch Masters. Van Meegeren neglected his studies to practice painting in the manner of Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer—his especial muse. Finding little critical acclaim for his old-style paintings amid the contemporary tide of artistic innovation, the forger was born: He vowed revenge, made millions and fooled the art world establishment (as well as the Nazis) by creating exquisite fake Vermeers, many of which ended up in Europe's most hallowed art museums.

Set in tumultuous times, I Was Vermeer has the makings of a noir thriller, and Wynne attempts to plot and pace it as such. The action, however, loses suspenseful momentum as he develops sub-themes of how ego-driven art criticism fosters forgery, and minutely discusses the forger's craft (including van Meegeren's reproduction of the craquelure, or age lines, in his most famous Vermeer forgery, "The Supper at Emmaus"). Crime thriller or forgery primer, this intriguing read also proves another epigram: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.


The red-headed league

An angelic "stunner," Lizzie Siddal—one-time shop girl, celebrated artists' model and opium addict—graces many 19th-century masterworks by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais and other pre-Raphaelite painters. In Lizzie Siddal: The Face of the Pre-Raphaelites, writer and scholar Lucinda Hawksley (Charles Dickens' great-great-great granddaughter) provides a compassionate portrait of this muse who was also a talented artist and poet in her own right.

Red-haired, temperamental Siddal was not a typical Victorian beauty, but her face and manner nevertheless lifted her from poverty to become London's society darling. Model, mistress and then wife of Rossetti, she was mentored by him and earned the artistic patronage of John Ruskin. Siddal is most famous, however, for her appearances in the paintings (portrayed both as Ophelia and Beatrice) of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a 19th-century "society set up by seven idealistic young men who were passionate about art [and] depressed about the current, very conventional state of the art world."

Fine research gives Hawksley's portrait vital tension as she examines Rossetti's milieu, revealing unrest beneath the carefree, bohemian surfaces of the pre-Raphaelites' lives. Exploring the difficult existence of "the world's first 'supermodel,'" she captures her subject's erotic, erratic and haunting essence. Despite all the acclaim, happiness eluded Siddal and she died of a drug overdose at 32.


Da Vinci coda

She is that famous enigmatic face without eyebrows and only a half-smile, but who was Mona Lisa and what is the mystery of her enduring allure? History professor Donald Sassoon, purportedly the world's leading expert on the "Mona Lisa," tells all in Leonardo and the Mona Lisa Story: The History of a Painting Told in Pictures.

More than 400 gorgeous color visuals—illustrations, paintings and photographs—are the centerpiece of Sassoon's voluptuous biography. The volume is further embellished with lively, informative captions, plus five charming and erudite essays on da Vinci's humble beginnings; how he came to paint Lisa Gherardini; the painting's rise in popularity in the literary culture of the Napoleonic Age; its theft from the Louvre; and its eventual rise to global iconic status through imitation, parody and commercial use. But why does the lady intrigue millions? Says Sassoon, "the 'Mona Lisa' has moved outside her frame, beyond her historical context. . . . She has saturated popular culture and has become whatever others want her to be."


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