Finding Botticelli

My other new novel, Finding Botticelli, is finished and ready to go. It’s the story of an art heist but with a bizarre twist. One winter evening in 2001, gunshots are heard on the campus of little Everett College, west of Boston. A security guard is found bound and gagged, and college museum director Sigrid Andersen discovers their prized 16th-Century Andrea Rossi Christ Crucified Between the Two Thieves missing. Oddly, however, the thieves leave behind something possibly far more valuable – an apparently very old, very fine version of Botticelli’s Primavera.

Some brand it a fake, but others think the museum’s new “acquisition” may be a previously unknown Botticelli. So, is it genuine, a godsend for the financially-troubled college? Or just a clever fake? Who engineered this clever “art swap” and why?

New to Everett, Sigi Andersen is already feuding with her boss Stephen Balfour, controversial head of the Fine Arts Department. Widely disliked, Balfour is the small college’s only real superstar: TV personality, charismatic teacher, prolific fundraiser, ardent humanist with a penchant for the spectacular. Finding Botticelli depicts Balfour’s battle with Professor of Religion Giorgio Santoro, Florence native and a former Jesuit priest, for the minds and hearts of the college community. Santoro and his followers regularly protest the Coney’s edgy art shows which feature such works as Piss Christ and art by Mapplethorpe, Chris Ofili and other outliers. The LGBT film festival is, of course, an annual target. Unfazed, Balfour carries on.

Initial tests indicate pseudo-Primavera – as the media are calling it – may date from the Renaissance. Sigi invites Filippo Bruni, her mentor at the Uffizi and a leading Botticelli expert, to examine the painting. Meantime, Balfour lays plans for a blockbuster show headlined by pseudo-Primavera. True to form, Santoro attacks the painting as pornographic and abusive to women. As it turns out, Santoro and Bruni were boyhood friends in Florence. Out of contact for years, they meet during Bruni’s visit, but Santoro is oddly cool to his former friend.

Bruni’s examination determines that the mystery painting is indeed of Botticelli’s workshop, though likely not by the master himself. Then the college’s insurance experts weigh in, pronouncing it a real Botticelli! This sets off the irrepressible Balfour who soon is in high gear promoting “Primavera Due (another new name!) and the World of Botticelli: Beauty, Love and the Renaissance Ideal.”

The story roars ahead, leading the reader through twists and turns. A burglary in Boston’s North End. A Renaissance Fair with Tableau Vivant and a Bonfire of the Vanities. A disastrous fire on the Everett campus. In the end, the investigations lead to an unexpected conclusion.

Fans of historical and suspense fiction will enjoy Finding Botticelli. So will art lovers interested in art crime and Renaissance art. Also the many engrossed by the perennial conflict of humanism and Christian values. Boston fans will enjoy the familiar settings and local color.