Product Description
The Vanishing Man
Author(s): Laura Cumming
Format: Paperback
In Pursuit of Velazquez
Winner of the James Tait Black Biography Prize
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Selected as a Book of the Year in the Herald
In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velázquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile.
Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velázquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before.
About the Author
Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her books include A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits (2009) and The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez (2016) which won the James Tait Black Biography Prize. Her family memoir, On Chapel Sands: my Mother and other Missing Persons (2019) was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, Costa and Rathbone's Folio prizes.
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