Book&Art: the boy from Bruges

 Written by Melania Di Fazio

Translated by Sarah Fortunee Tabbakh

Italian Version Here

"My boy, one must know to keep silent, especially if one knows" 

Renaissance Europe was, as history narrates, the stage for countless palace intrigues, heinous murders, marriages of convenience and pandemics that decimated entire villages and cities. And the world of art with its artists, clients, models, shop boys and pigment sellers was certainly no stranger to such a precarious life. 

Gilbert Sinoué in his "The boy from Bruges" narrates, with a pinch of fantasy, tinged with the dark shades of a detective novel, a cross-section of Europe of 1441, travelling between the warm and sunny Tuscan hills and the flat and misty Flanders . Lorenzo Ghiberti, Jan Van Eyck, Antonello Da Messina and young workshop apprentices are just some of the characters that Jan, adopted son of the great Flemish master of oil painting Van Eyck, meets in his journey: the shy thirteen-year-old must have the courage to face his fears to find out who is behind the mysterious deaths in Florence, Antwerp, Tournai and, naturally, Bruges. 

Why do these murders have so many things in common? What does all this have to do with his father and him? Why does the great master fear for his own life? The colors (naturally, in oil) that fill the canvases and tables of the great European Renaissance painters and the suggestive images and ancient smells are overwhelming and propel you into a fascinating and dark era. An exciting historical-artistic thriller with an unexpected ending, that you won’t be able to put down…