The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece

An Italian hamlet perched on a hilltop close to the Adriatic coast, a dilapidated palace overlooking the sea, and an archive unknown to academics in the basement, dusty and cobweb-filled and lighted by a solitary bulb. Here, Francesca Cappelletti, a young doctoral student from Rome, discovers something that sets off a hunt for a very valuable artwork that has been missing for over 200 years.

The maestro of Italian Baroque painting was Caravaggio. In addition to being a brilliant painter, he battled inner problems. He painted pieces of work with transcendent emotional and visual force while drinking and fighting in the streets and taverns of Rome four centuries ago. He also moved from rooming house to rooming house and was often in and out of prison. His ascent from obscurity to fame and fortune didn't change his aggressive nature, however. He eventually committed murder out of fury, which made him run from Rome as a wanted man. He passed away young, by himself, and in an unusual way.

According to Caravaggio researchers, there are now between sixty and eighty of his paintings in existence. Many more have been lost to time; the exact number is unknown. Undoubtedly, a masterwork exists somewhere, misplaced as a simple replica, maybe in a little village church, a storehouse, or over a fireplace.

In search of the long-lost artwork known as The Taking of Christ, Jonathan Harr sets out on a quest that has long enthralled fans of Caravaggio due to its unexplained disappearance and enigmatic destiny. Francesca Cappelletti follows the picture across a continent and hundreds of years of history when she finds a clue in that old archive. But she doesn't eventually succeed in putting the jigsaw together until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an Irish art restorer.