Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Gustav Klimt originally painted Portrait of a Lady in 1910 and retouched it in 1917. Why did Klimt modify the painting? Who was his model? Who stole the painting in 1997? And why was it mysteriously returned in 2019? De Peretti’s intriguing work of historical fiction imagines answers to those questions.
The novel opens in New York in 1929, with an ambitious young shoeshine boy. An immigrant from Austria, Isidore is determined to make a fortune in his new country, especially after he falls in love with an upper-class young lady. Isidore is both very intelligent and very lucky. A tip he receives from one of his shoeshine customers earns him enough money to win both the girl and a place in her family’s business. The reader is then taken back in time, to Isidore’s beginnings as the illegitimate child of the heir of a wealthy family and a young maid in his household, a young maid who also happened to have posed for a certain portrait.
In his old age, Isidore is confronted by his own illegitimate adult child. Determined not to abandon Pearl as he feels his father abandoned him, Isidore embraces her. And it is she who rediscovers the portrait and solves the tragic mysteries of her father’s past. Settings in both New York and Vienna come alive in this beautifully written novel, as do the impassioned, imperfect characters. Recommended.
