Two New Art History Whodunit Novels Look to Paintings for Clues

Giorgio Vasari had the misfortune to be born a second-rate painter in a time and place where when run-of-the-mill talent just wouldn’t cut it. Toss a florin and you’d hit Michelangelo’s David, or Raphael’s Madonna. So rather than beat the old masters, he chronicled them, hooking his reputation to the three hundred names that make up his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Artists (1550–1568). For that book, Vasari has been dubbed the “father o