Art-Historical Fiction Finds New Drama in Venice, Manchester, and the Vatican
Five recent novels are turning to art history for more than atmosphere. In these books, paintings, sculptures, and artists become the center of plots shaped by politics, desire, rivalry, and secrecy. The settings range from 1930s Manchester to 19th-century London, with detours through Venice and the Vatican.
Carolyn O’Brien’s Rose & Renzo, published by Northodox Press on May 14, is set against a Europe where fascism is on the rise and Mosley’s Black Shirt movement is active in England. The novel follows a mysterious Italian artist who befriends a young art student in Manchester, leaving the question of allegiance hanging over the story.
Kerry Chaput’s The Secret Courtesan, from She Writes Press and published on February 10, begins with the discovery of a late-Renaissance erotic statue in Venice. The premise sends an art historian into a race against time, with a local crime family complicating the search for the object’s maker and meaning.
Matthew Plampin’s These Wicked Devices, published by the Borough Press on May 7, is set during the Holy Jubilee 1650. The novel draws Diego Velázquez’s assistant into a power struggle inside Leo X’s Vatican, extending the familiar pleasures of court intrigue into the machinery of ecclesiastical power. Plampin is also the author of Mrs Whistler.
Lucy Waverley’s Noble Beasts, published by Black and White on May 21, moves to London in 1858, where Edwin Landseer is creating the “noble beasts” for Trafalgar Square. The novel frames that public commission through private strain, as Landseer retreats into memory and a life-changing grand passion while wrestling with self-doubt.
Claire Berest’s Frida, published by Mountain Leopard Press on April 23 in hardback and September 24 in paperback, is the English translation of Rien n’est noir. The novel begins with Frida Kahlo meeting Diego Rivera at a party and reimagines one of modern art’s most charged relationships through Berest’s lens. Berest is the great-granddaughter of the art critic Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia.
Taken together, the books point to the continuing appeal of art-historical fiction: it offers not just period detail, but a way to stage larger questions about power, authorship, and the stories that survive around artworks and artists.
