In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland has succeeded in presenting a novel whose main protagonist is a painting. Beginning with a professor's revelation to his colleague of a painting he claims is an undiscovered Vermeer, Vreeland traces the life of the portrait back to its birth.
Inventing the life of a painting is not nearly so remarkable as Vreeland's invention of the lives and circumstances leading to the painting's transferal between owners. For some, the tragedies that necessitate their giving up the painting are less painful than the act of giving up the painting itself.
The lives in this novel are truly memorable for their portraits: from the unwed mother hanged as a witch whose last action is to set her child adrift in a basket with the painting, to the young daughter of a poor Dutch painter who watches her portrait auctioned to pay her father's debts.
Vreeland's prose evokes all the passion of its characters -- their triumphs and their tragedies. Art lovers will rejoice at this fictionalized account of one painting's odyssey through history.
