Florence, 1557. A painter is murdered with a hammer blow to the head and a chisel to the heart. It looks as though someone has painted over a section of the frescoes he has been labouring on for years at the church of San Lorenzo. But who could have killed old Jacopo da Pontormo, and why?
So begins this historical epistolary detective novel, stuffed with real-life Renaissance artists behaving badly. Investigating the murder at the behest of the duke, Cosimo de’ Medici, is Giorgio Vasari, painter and author of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Not exempt from suspicion is Agnolo Bronzino, commissioned here (as in fact) to finish his deceased master’s frescoes, since lost. In their time they drew comparisons to the Sistine Chapel, and indeed one of Vasari’s penpals is the great Michelangelo himself, resentful at being stuck in Rome building the dome of St Peter’s. “These are cruel times, my friend, for the defenders of art and beauty,” Michelangelo writes – as they always have been and shall remain.
Pontormo’s much-abused two assistants are initially the prime suspects: they are attending secret meetings in an attempt to unionise all the downtrodden amanuenses of great artists. (They call each other “comrade” and speak of a “spectre” haunting Italy.) The duke’s daughter, meanwhile, is writing to her aunt, Catherine de’ Medici (Queen of France), about a hunky page who has been giving her the glad eye. As the investigation proceeds we learn of secret passages, a missing pornographic painting, international intrigues and an annoying group of nuns who moan about not being given enough wine. One duke writes a letter to another, resisting attempts to marry their children in a hurry, in tones of exquisite sarcasm. An anonymous letter denouncing one artist for sodomy concludes in words that perfectly sum up the curtain-twitching bigot throughout history: “I am simply a faithful and obedient subject who would like to be able to sleep at night without being disturbed by the sounds of bestial, unnatural copulation, and I can assure you that all the respectable people on this street think the same.”
The star of the show, however, is Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith, sculptor, adventurer and author (his autobiography in real life is much admired): in Binet’s ventriloquism he is brave, catty and absurdly conceited, and gets to hide in cupboards and evade guards with irrepressible elan. “My movements,” he boasts in one report of his actions, were “too quick for the human eye”. Sam Taylor’s translation, superb throughout, reaches its apogee in Cellini’s joyously scandalous voice. The first line of his wonderfully impudent letter to the Queen of France reads: “God must love you, Madame, for he has placed me upon your path.”
The novel was originally published in France with the title Perspective(s), which makes more obvious the fact that, as well as its crowd of characters with their own points of view, it is also about the artistic technique of foreshortening. There is a very funny scene in which one artist manages to shoot an assassin with a crossbow because, as he explains in needless detail, his understanding of perspective helps him aim properly; while others speak in more serious tones about the way the vanishing point in a composition can make “infinity” visible to mortal man.
But this is not primarily a postmodern treatise on the philosophy of art; indeed, French reviewers complained both that the book was not as cerebral as Binet’s previous ludic successes such as HHhH and Civilisations, and that it was too difficult to follow the plot. One critic, offended by the total of 20 correspondents, blurted: “This is no longer an epistolary novel, it’s a WhatsApp group.” Another complained about anachronisms, as though Binet had his unhappy art-world labourers explicitly foreshadow Marx’s rhetoric without quite knowing what he was doing.
Perhaps those first readers were simply miffed that Binet had taken time out to write an entertainment (as Graham Greene called those too‑thrilling books of his he didn’t consider “novels”), but fans of the early Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Gilbert Adair should experience no such disappointments. Primarily, Perspectives aims, modestly and with thorough success, to be a dazzling romp.
• Perspectives by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, is published by Harvill Secker (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
