Reading Laurent Binet's "Perspective(s)" felt like stepping into a cleverly constructed historical puzzle box, and I found it quite fascinating. I was really drawn in by the setting in Renaissance Florence and especially the unique way Binet tells the story – entirely through letters, notes, and snippets from different characters trying to unravel a central mystery. It’s a playful approach, blending real history and art history with fiction in a way I found very engaging. Piecing together the plot through all these varied voices felt like an enjoyable intellectual exercise, and there’s a distinct wit present in the writing. The exploration of 'perspective' itself, both in art and in how the story is told, was something I particularly appreciated.

While I truly enjoyed the intricate structure and getting immersed in the historical details, perhaps the sheer number of viewpoints and the fragmented nature of the letters meant that I occasionally needed to pause just to make sure I was connecting all the dots correctly. And maybe because the focus is so much on the clever construction and historical context, the deep emotional dive into any single character felt slightly less central to me compared to the overall intellectual puzzle of the mystery.

But overall, I found "Perspective(s)" to be a remarkably inventive and stimulating read. It's impressive how Binet plays with form and history in such an entertaining way. If you enjoy literary historical fiction that offers a clever twist and rewards a bit of reader engagement, I think this provides a very rewarding experience.

Life imitates art, and in this case, life is art.

Filled with murder, family drama, political insurrections, art feuds, forbidden love affairs, and nuns-gone-wild, Binet's epistolary novel, Perspective(s), is Agatha Christie--16th century Italy edition.

Well worth the read, enjoyable from every perspective. 3.5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher for this e-arc.

5 stars!!!!

This book, which is actually a "collection of letters" between the main characters, is a beautiful unraveling of the mystery of who killed Jacopo da Pontormo. Instead of a serial "whodunnit", you are instead transported to the lives of the people who lived in that time, including Medici family members, famous artists, and religious figures. This is not a book to be rushed through - instead, the language and imagery are to be enjoyed. There are moments of humor (the nuns!) as well as poignancy. You must be in the mood to linger over the voices and not want to rush, or else you would not enjoy this book.

Upon finishing I was compelled to look up more about the Florence Dome (which I visited 20 years ago), as well as the the figures portrayed in the book that I didn't know as much about. The author has done an amazing job imagining details of their lives that we do not know about for sure.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC

It's not nice to gossip and everyone knows reality television is the entertainment equivalent of, like, Surge soda. Getting your fix of that kind of plotting and backstabbing from historical fiction, though? That's just called reading. Take Laurent Binet's Perspective(s), now translated from its original French and ready for you to pick up and get in on all the drama in a court in sixteenth-century Florence. 

The grisly death of a painter, Jacopo, found in front of a fresco-in-progress in a Florentine church sets off an investigation—one made more urgent by the discovery of a painting within his studio depicting the duke's daughter, Maria, in a rather compromised position. Such scandal could derail her advantageous marriage to the brutish son of a neighboring nobleman. The duke demands the painting be immediately confiscated, even as the investigation continues. But the picture soon disappears as part of a plot to undermine the duke by his cousin, Catherine, the queen of France. The duke's investigators furiously try to solve both the murder and the theft of the painting with leads that stretch as far as Michelangelo (yes, that Michelangelo) and as close as the duke's own wardrobe.

Still, they seem to discover only side plots and dead ends, including a minor "plebian uprising" (read: unionization attempt) by one of Jacopo's employees and a disagreement on artistic style between nuns. Meanwhile, a page of the duke has promised Maria that he'll personally make sure the offensive painting is destroyed—promises that quickly turn into promises of love. Maria asks Catherine for her advice, and then support, should she elope with this commoner and flee to France, becoming yet another moving piece in this tapestry of plots and betrayals and subplots and back-stabbings that all seem to reveal more questions for the duke's investigators than they answer.

Told entirely through letters between the involved characters, the many threads of Perspective(s) can easily get tangled if you don't keep a thumb in the list of correspondents. This works very well for the most part, making the unfolding story feel like gossip you're gradually uncovering rather than reading a proper book. It walks the tightrope of sounding like authentic written correspondence while divulging enough details that we outsiders get adequate context. We don't need more explanation from the narrator—in this case, a traveler who introduces the book by telling of a fortunate discovery of this bundle of letters at a flea market in Tuscany—but I also wouldn't mind a little more from the narrator; other than the tale of discovering the letters and a few historical details like the difference in date of the new year and telling time in sixteenth-century Florence, our narrator is really a silent facilitator. It works, but it also makes the framing device feel superfluous, a detail added in the beginning but forgotten before the midpoint.

Among all our characters and all their plots, there are few to root for. The investigators are ostensibly the ones seeking to right a wrong, but they're also an extension of the will of the duke, who may be a product of his time but is not exactly what you'd call a benevolent leader. There are the plotters who are trying to remove the indecent painting from Florence, but their promises to destroy it are transparently empty and their ultimate goal isn't better than anything the duke could come up with. The artists on the fringes of the whole affair, including the one preaching the heresy of workers' rights, are sympathetic characters, as are the nuns and the foolishly lovestruck Maria. For them, they struggle to find a comfortable space between the bars of oppression. Some of them find it, while others aren't so lucky.

Yet this isn't the kind of book that makes you feel like the bad guys win, or that there are no victors worth rooting for. The epistolary nature of Perspective(s), along with the framing of the letters as centuries-old discoveries, blunt the unfolding of the unhappier plot elements, letting us sit back and relish the political intrigue. It carries the same kind of popcorn-munching near-taboo feeling as watching some really petty reality television. But it's about art, and it takes place in sixteenth-century Italy, and it has Michelangelo in it, and that totally makes it respectable. Read with abandon.

This was the mysterious historical fiction I didn't know I needed in my life. A huge thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC gifted copy for my review.

This was translated from French.

The stage is 1557 Florence, and the fresco painter Pontormo is found murdered in his studio at the Chapel of San Lorenzo. The cast of characters surrounding his death and the political waves that are rocked from it is what makes up the main plot. Driven by the commission by Duke of Florence Cosimo de Medici, our main detective Giorgio Vasari is trying to figure out who murdered the great artist and why. The why turns out to be multi-layered with more than one person who could have a motive. There is a missing painting, political uprising, plots to over throw the Duke, run-away daughters, etc.

The whole story is written by letters so it DOES take some brain power to keep all the characters straight, but after a few dozen of pages in things get more clear and familiar as the correspondences typically do not change between characters. I really loved the way the story was revealed letter by letter and while I had my suspicions who had done the artist in, it was a delightful reveal and really painted the whole Florence in the 1550s for me.

Excellently done and one I will recommend as a fun read! Had VERY similar vibes to a Wes Anderson movie (dare I say?) I really need this as a film.

Laurent Binet loves playing historical games. His last book Civilisations, imagined what would have happened if the Aztecs conquered Europe rather than the other way around. His latest book Perspective(s) (translated from the French by Sam Taylor) starts with what can only be called a classic conceit. The author has gone into an antiquarian shop and discovered a trove of correspondence which, when run together, tells the most amazing tale. The how and why anyone person would have gotten hold of all of this correspondence and then put it together in this order is a question left unasked, because it is unanswerable and would spoil the illusion. And the illusion is all that matters as Binet spins a wild a raucous tale of skullduggery in 16th century Florence.
It is 1557 and the artist Jacopo da Pontormo is found dead next his frescoes in a church in Florence. The ruler of Florence, Cosimo I dé Medici, tasks a fellow artist and art historian, Giorgio Vasari to investigate. Both Vasari and Pontormo, and others, were students of Michelangelo, who himself is in Rome overseeing the construction of St Paul’s. While this investigation proceeds a number of other events are taking place. Pontormo had produced a painting of Venus and Cupid but used the face of Maria, the 17 year old daughter of Cosimo Medici. Maria’s aunt, Catherine dé Medici, the queen of France, is trying to secure the painting to embarrass Cosimo. Maria herself is promised in marriage but has fallen for a courtier who seeks to spirit her away. And in another thread, Pontormo’s colour grinder Marco Moro is trying to organise workers who support these artists into a type of proto-union.
As can be seen from that precis, there is a lot going on in Perspective(s), all told through a series of letters between the various characters (a cast listed at the beginning that is much larger than that mentioned above including artist and rogue Benvenuto Cellini and an artistic nun). There is plenty of thematic heft here. There is the dispute about the nature of art and the use of nudes in particular which were starting to be frowned upon and covered over at the order of the new Pope, there is the question of perspective itself in art, there are considerations of privilege and entitlement, how far people will go to protect what they personally believe is sacrosanct. But Perspective(s) is no Name of the Rose, as it also more than a bit of a romp – with sword fights, secret agents, elopement, battles and natural disasters. Binet uses increasingly short messages to increase the pace of the narrative when he needs to.
Renaissance Florence is having a bit of a renaissance on the crime front. With DV Bishop’s Cesar Aldo crime series set in the first years of the reign of Cosimo I de Medici. And now with Perspective(s) an erudite murder mystery with plenty more story happening around the investigation and a surprising conclusion.

As someone who deeply enjoys art history (especially the Italian Renaissance), Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet was an absolute treat. It weaves an engaging murder mystery into a detailed historical setting, and I found myself completely immersed in the world the author developed.

Despite the large cast, it was easy to follow their storylines and roles within the larger mystery. One of the highlights for me was hearing from figures like Michelangelo. Historical accuracy could be argued, but exploring the thoughts and behaviors of these characters was exciting.

I often found it difficult to put the book down, feeling the urge to read the details contained in the following letter. I would recommend this to anyone who is fascinated by this artistically rich period of history, and suggest keeping an open mind!

Perspectives is a historical fiction murder mystery set in 16th century Florence. The novel is written through a series a letters sent back and forth by a number of characters , including Michelangelo. The story is full of political intrigue, ruminations on art and its importance to the culture at that time.
I enjoyed the back and forth of the letters that moved the many storylines forward. It sparked an interest in the art that was created in the time period.
The book contained humor, heartbreak and intrigue.
A few quibbles … some of the names of characters were very close ( starting with B and V) so at times it was confusing who was who. Some of the writing was too modern … describing someone as dazed and confused … seemed not to reflect the time period.
Aside from that I enjoyed Perspectives and would recommend this book to others
I rate it a 3.5… rounded up to a 4.
Thanks to net galley fir allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review
.

I really really enjoyed reading this book. It was honestly well written and entertaining.
A well written story that was so hard to put down.
I loved everything about this novel!
Mesmerizing!

I received an ARC from NetGalley for this book. I had high expectations as I have not read much 1600 Florence historical books and was quite underwhelmed. Grateful this was under 400 pages since I hate DNFing a book but the plot just was meh to me.

16th century letters long kept secret illuminate a period in Florentine history

During the Italian Renaissance in the year 1557 the dead body of painter Jacapo da Pontormo is found in a Florentine church beneath the frescoes on which he had been working for years. He was murdered, but why? When a scandalous portrait of one of Duke Cosimo de' Medici's daughters, Maria, is then found in Pontormo's living quarters the situation threatens to cause turmoil in the city. Cosimo tasks painter and historian Giorgio Vasari with investigating both the artist's murder and the circumstances of how the painting came to be. His quest uncovers intrigue, tension and rivalries in the arenas of politics, art and religion; the more Vasari uncovers, the longer his list of suspects grows. In a city with turbulent currents running through its cultural and political landscapes, the unveiling of the killer may be as shocking as the painting itself.
Perspective(s) is a blend of historical fiction and a literary murder mystery. The story unfolds as a series of letters between numerous historical figures of the time, from Michelangelo to Bronzino, Cellini to various de' Medicis (including Catherine) and more, each of whom have a distinct voice and a unique viewpoint as to what is happening in the city. The many voices provide a vivid portrayal of this chaotic period in the beautiful and storied city of Florence, although at times the sheer number of different voices chiming in became (for me, at least) hard to keep sorted. The pace of the tale moves along briskly for the most part, and the level of historical detail is impressive. It isn't, however, a quick whodunnit by any means; it is likely to appeal most to readers who enjoy historical fiction that has a thread of mystery woven into its framework. Readers of authors like Hilary Mantel, Iain Pears and Umberto Eco should definitely give this their attention. My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for allowing me access to a copy of this novel of Renaissance intrigue in exchange for my honest review.

Historical fiction set in 1557 Florence and written in epistolary form between all of the famous artists and politicians of that time. The central themes are the murder of Jacopo Pontormo-working on frescoes meant to rival those of the Sistine Chapel and the discovery of a scandalous portrait of Maria de Medici daughter of the duke of Florence. A quick read, at times humorous, but also through the letters an insightful look and the important artistic and political characters of the era. The mysteries are solved but you will have to read it to find out😂😂😂

A very interesting premise and story with good prose. I loved the epistolary format and the setting of the era. 3.5 stars

I loved this novel—told exclusively through letters between a large cast of historical characters—so much that I ran out to buy it on publishing day despite already having the ARC. (Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.)

With that said, I'll confess that I didn't expect to love the this book. It took me a few letters, flipping back to the list of correspondents at the beginning of the book, to fully fall into the tempo and rhythm of the story. Once I did, this novel became the page-turner promised in the marketing materials. I'm generally a fan of epistolary novels, and it is hard to pull off a novel that is entirely told in this format, but Binet's letter writers always felt true to their characters. (The distinction in voice is not just character to character but also who the characters are writing to, which felt authentic and helped to build a world of class distinction and station that pushes the story to its resolution.)

I didn't know much about this period of history, the Medici family, or the Florentine Renaissance painters, and Binet made sure that readers could follow the drama he built without too many pauses to look up specific paintings being referenced. (That said, when a novel sends me to Wikipedia, it's always a joy.)

Highly recommend this novel for folks looking for smart, creative, literary fiction that plays with format and storytelling to create something truly unique.

My husband persuaded me to watch the Netflix series on the de’ Medicis, and now I’m determined to convince him that Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is better.

In the Preface, an unnamed narrator, purportedly the author, explains how a large stack of antique letters came into his possession and, once translated, became the chronological account that follows, a history that completely changed his opinion of Florence and Florentines.
Following a list of the letter writers and brief identifications, the history opens on New Year’s Day, 1557, with Maria de’ Medici’s letter to her aunt, Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France and estranged sister of Maria’s father, Cosimo de’ Medici, Duke of Florence. What seems like a chatty letter reveals parents’ attempts to marry off Maria and news of a painter’s death in Saint Lorenzo’s main chapel, purportedly a suicide due to dissatisfaction with the frescos to which he had already dedicated eleven years of his life. In contrast, the second letter from art historian Vasari to Michelangelo not only clarifies that Pontormo, the painter, had been murdered and that Vasari has been charged with solving the murder, but also reveals that a scandalous painting of Cupid and Venus, the latter with Maria de’ Medici’s face, has been found in Pontormo’s quarters.

With two contrasting perspectives on the murder already, letter follows letter, introducing conflicting ideas about the quality of Pontormo’s frescos, the sadness or joy with which various people receive news of his death, information about possible suspects, and the way the painting bearing Maria’s face leaks out to the public. Can anyone trust anyone else? Can Maria’s parents arrange a politically and financially appropriate marriage for now that their daughter’s morality appears to have been compromised? With talk of painters’ jealousies and with the cutthroat politics everyone has come to expect from the various de’ Medici family branches and their powerful allies, the 176 brief letters comprising this historical novel will keep readers turning pages, encountering one perspective after another, breathlessly awaiting the solution to the murder and the next turn of events in the de’ Medici family history.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for an advance reader egalley of this captivating new epistolary novel from French author Laurent Binet.

"These are cruel times, my friend, for the defenders of art and beauty."

Perspective(s) is a murder mystery set in 1557 Florence. A bundle of "found" letters between around twenty correspondents comprise the narrative. The Duke, Cosimo de' Medici, his wife The Duchess Eleanor of Toledo, artists of the period including everybody from Vasari to Bronzino to Michelangelo himself, studio assistants and apprentices, two vexing nuns, (followers of Savonarola), and the Queen of France, Catherine de' Medici, to name a few.

Vasari has been appointed by the Duke to investigate the murder of Pontormo, who was busy painting the frescoes in the Basilica of San Lorenzo, said to rival those of the Sistine Chapel, where he was found with his head bashed in and a chisel in his heart.

Vasari has a lot on his plate. In addition to the murder, he's also tasked with locating a Pontormo painting that has gone missing. The offensive painting depicts Venus in a pose with Cupid considered scandalous (the church was going through a phase modifying paintings and sculptures to cover all the naked bits), even more shocking because the face of Venus was that of the Duke's daughter, whose marriage he was trying to arrange. High stakes!

Add to that: political intrigue, demanding nuns (more wine with dinner!), upstairs downstairs shenanigans, assassins, a flood, secret passageways, rebellion, rivaling, gossiping, and at times petty artists and all their art, art revelations and philosophy, and we have a very entertaining novel. Binet captures all their voices, the characters are distinct, and the letters weave a page turning story.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the Advance Reader Copy. (pub date 4/8/2025)

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

From the framing device of a trove of discovered letters forward, this book represents the kind of games I most enjoy authors playing. Binet's the son of an historian, and it shows...for good and ill. The good is the playfulness of his choices to focus narrative attention on; the ill is his necessary fictionalizing of real figures of the well-studied past at times slipping into...absurdity, silliness, OTT recherche Proustian locutionary excess?...well, too-muchness, anyhow.

It is, I'll say clearly and now, well worth the effort to accept without engaging too much critical overdrive. (My worst readerly failing.)

Sort out fact from fiction exactly as much as suits you; nothing in your pleasure will change knowing more than you're told on the pages of the story about the people (note I did not say characters) on these pages. The murdered man emerges as we all do from the memories of those around us, as a blurry-edged shadow. It is unclear to me if he was actually guilty of lèse-majesté—and I do not care to establish this. Or any other of the many interesting side-lights Author Binet shines onto Savonarola's Florence. (I'd be a really bad puritan. I've always got a question they don't like, and am absolutely guaranteed to perform every sex act they abominate...in public, to show how they can't tell *me* what to do!)

The character Vasari is, in a word, adroit. No matter what he's asked to do, or be, or fix, he's got it, understands the assignment and the subtext, has a guy who knows a guy on his side. It's always good to know a Vasari because he might be oily but he's effective. People in power love Vasari-type guys. If you're the guy he knows who's got the connections he can use, you will never get public credit—that's all his—but he won't forget you. Until he does.

No, not a bestie to rely on, but a great guy to read about, and a top-notch sleuth.

As the pages flew by I realized I was in that reading flow state that's ever elusive. I was deep into Author Binet's imagination (Michelangelo as gossipy old queen, Marie de'Medici as old queen in political hot water) and unaware of the ever-advancing hour. When I closed the cover at two-thirty, I was sad to see it all end. I'm not sure why the very slightly repetitious recaps Binet's Vasari offers the reader to explain the resolution of the killing didn't weigh more heavily on my pleasure in the read...my conclusion is that I like Vasari's very natural-feeling shifts in tone. These do, however, slow the story's roll a but more than I myownself would prefer (that missing half-star above). Vasari is, as mentioned before, an operator, so he's bound to have different conversational registers for different people. In an epistolary novel that's both easy to present and easy to explain. No one in this collection of invented letters has an overview of the situation, just one corner of the composition, so everyone's responding to events as honestly as they feel safe doing; but they're all watching their tone because this was a dangerous time (see link to Savonarola above). It's similar to the effect of my doted-on The Case of Cem.

I'm delighted with this read. I'm recommending it to most all y'all because it's fun to see an author summon the attitudes of people long-dead in this honest, ambivalent way. I don't think the readers averse to history will be that tempted, though I hope one or two will try it out.

“These are hard times for art.” – Michelangelo writing to his father in 1509

In the opening of Laurent Binet's "Perspective(s)," a man only known as "B" discovers 176 letters in a 19th-century antique shop. These letters, written by notable figures like Michelangelo and Catherine de' Medici, center around the investigation of the murder of artist Jacopo da Pontormo in 1557 Renaissance Florence. While the focus of the novel is the murder mystery storyline, it also delves into the political and religious power struggles of the era.

Jacopo da Pontormo was found dead in the chapel where he had been working, stabbed with his own chisel and struck by his own hammer. He had been creating a series of frescoes, including a controversial depiction of "Venus and Cupid," in which the face of the nude Venus had been replaced with the face of Maria de' Medici, the daughter of the Duke of Florence. This scandalous artwork created an opportunity for exploitation, potentially to humiliate the duke and his family.

Art historian Giorgio Vasari was selected to investigate the case, and there was no shortage of potential culprits. Could it have been a rival artist, fueled by envy? An individual acting on behalf of the enraged duke? Or perhaps a religious fanatic, inspired by the decrees of Pope Paul IV, who vehemently opposed the "obscene" nudity depicted in art?

The letters are generally brief, and the pace progresses without getting bogged down in details. The area of “perspective” and some art theory is explored, but this is not a technical treatise on art history. The humor is quite prevalent, with the escapades of the renegade nuns being particularly comedic. It is also amusing to see the two-faced double-crossing among the characters. While this fictitious retelling of history is not a thriller in a league with “The Name of the Rose,” it is a quick read and will compel you to check out the frescoes and architecture referred to.

“After all, there is only one noble thing upon this Earth, and that is art. Man is merely a fading stain on a wall.”

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

There are stories that surpass the frame in which they were told, overstepping genres to create a new subtype, using historical fiction to give nods to the literary history they were inspired by, sliding masterfully from whodunnit to a who-are-they character study. 'Perspective(s)' by Laurent Binet is among those alien stories that feel both familiar and refreshingly new, not quite like anything encountered before.

With 'Perspective(s)', Binet writes the epistolary tale of the murder investigation of 16th century painter Pontormo. The master has been found dead, killed with his own tools, and the Duke of Florence would like to know who is responsible for this crime. Or rather, the Duke of Florence would like someone responsible for this crime, a name, preferrably someone who fits the bill and has "the worst instincts of the plebs." And so our story begins, weaving a rich and dense tapestry of political chess, gender and class divide, art versus religion, truth versus justice against the backdrop of the detective story. Over the course of 176 letters, Binet takes us on a walk through Renaissance Florence and the world that surrounds it, leaning on the epistolary genre to shortcut to the historical setting and psychological portraits of each character.

Binet aptly plays with the polysemy of his title. 'Perspective(s)' relates not only to the technique used in painting and the multitude of views expressed in these letters on the matter of Pontormo's death but also to the notion of maintaining one's perspective as the different players reveal themselves through their letter writing, exposing the grander historical and sociopolitical scene as one makes their way through the novel. Ultimately, there is but one perspective to behold; the one guided by the principle of truth. And truth is Binet's preferred means to access the psyche of the multitude of characters he's delicately puppeteering as he weaves his story: manipulation from the powerful who see opportunity in this crime, rational thinking from those dedicated to revealing Pontormo's actual killer, obfuscation of truth and beauty through censorship by the religious preferences du jour. It is all done with finesse and yet Binet's pen never lingers, never spends too much time, striking the right balance between revelation and ambiance again and again.

'Perspective(s)' will be especially delightful to those who've enjoyed French classics and will be able to recognise the multiple nods to famous French writings such as Stendhal's 'Duchess of Palliano' for the preface acting as writer-reader contract and, of course, 'Dangerous Liaisons' by Choderlos de Laclos, the most notorious of all epistolary novels, from which Binet lifts the dominant-submissive relationship between the Marquise de Merteuil and Cécile de Volanges to create his version of emotionally detached and ever-scheming Catherine de Medici luring and using her naive and trusting niece, Maria, the daughter of the Duke of Florence. As someone who views 'Dangerous Liaisons' as one of their favourite pieces of literature, I found lip-smacking pleasure in reading Binet's impeccable rewriting of the Merteuil-Cécile relationship.

However, you needn't be a connoisseur of detective stories, epistolary novels, late medieval art, Renaissance Italy or French literature to fully enjoy and indulge in 'Perspective(s)'. Ultimately, Binet's hidden talent is making the intrigue and its 20 (yes, 20!) correspondents easily accessible to all. This is a universal page-turner that one will devour, like a delicate mille-feuille with oh-so many layers of the human makeup – money, jealousy, vengeance, power, cynicism, art, nudity, religion, page after page of perfectly balanced goodness infused with humour from the very beginning until the end. This five-star rating was ridiculously easy to give. Monsieur Binet, how dare you?

"O tempora, o mores: these people are forever quoting Cicero, but they are far more guilty than we are. They consider themselves the defenders of every virtue, blind to the fact that – since they have abandoned the message of the Gospel – it is their own souls that have been led astray and corrupted."

If you’ve spent any time amongst a group of creative people, you have no doubt witnessed the depths to which artists of any ilk will ravish each other with eloquent, twenty dollar words when in direct contact with each other, while at the same time, barely allowing them a second to fully turn away before plunging a knife fashioned from gossip, intrigue and spite into the back of their so-called peer. It’s gracious and yet altogether simple-minded of us to stand firm in the belief that the truly great artists of our time - like a da Vinci, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Michelangelo - could ever have been so bothered to traffic down in the depths with the common tea-spillers of their age, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that these men’s hands were likely filthy with the coarse and unseemly dirt of whispered gossip.

Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s), translated from its original 2023 French release by Sam Taylor, allows us a glimpse into a possible version of a series of events that took place in Florence, Italy in the sixteenth century surrounding the untimely death of Florence’s notoriously rebellious Mannerist painter, Jacopo da Pontormo. In our reality, Pontormo passed away at the age of 62 after spending nearly a decade attempting to complete his final masterpiece depicting his version of the Last Judgment on the choir frescoes of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in what was either an ode or a call to battle with Florence’s most well-known son, Michelangelo. In the reality of Perspective(s), Pontormo is found dead at the foot of his unfinished frescoes on New Year’s Day in 1557 with a massive head wound and an artist’s chisel buried in his chest in an area that fewer than five people have been allowed in for close to a decade.

What follows is an alternate reality told through 176 separate letters from twenty different sources mired in the Italian art world, the Florentine Republic, the crown of France, the Catholic church and…Michelangelo. All participants in this story are at the ready to effuse the accomplishments of their letters’ recipients with one hand while actively sketching out the blueprints of their demise with their other hand. Perspective(s) is all at once a murder mystery, a salacious gossip rag, a princess and the pauper romance, a tale of worker’s struggle and revolution, a high-minded critique of art and a deftly creative take on the death of an artist whose work was both celebrated and reviled for it’s bald-faced rejection of the artistic traditions of its era.

At the heart of Perspective(s) sits the Medici family both in the form of Duke Cosimo I de ’Medici, the head of the Florentine Republic, and his cousin Catherine de ‘Medici, the Queen of France. Much of Pontormo’s work in Florence, including the frescoes at the site of his death, were a result of Medici family patronage despite the content of Pontormo’s work having fallen out of favour with the arrival of a new papal influence in the form of Pope Paul IV. Immediately following reports of Pontormo’s death, Cosimo assigns noted art historian Giorgio Vasari to head up an investigation into his death while also commissioning Agnolo Bronzino, himself a former understudy of Pontormo, to complete the unfinished frescoes and save face for the Florentine Republic.

Vasari’s ensuing investigation drums up evidence of a secret, hidden Pontormo painting depicting the daughter of Cosimo in an deeply unflattering manner unsuitable of a ripe for marriage offspring of a Duke along with the realization that the murderer also took the time to paint over one part of Pontormo’s work on the frescoes. As the missives fly back and forth across sixteenth century Europe, the investigation deepens and it’s effects on the Florentine art scene and the government take shape as accusations and assumptions are tossed around just as casually as each of the corresponding painters seem to refer to each other as “Master”.

If the idea of a historical novel told in a series of letters that centres around the Florentine art world of the sixteenth century and it’s connections to the church and it’s benefactors in the sitting government of the time sounds dense or uninviting, I can assure you that Laurent Binet approaches this subject matter with his signature flair for language and a level of comedy that I was not prepared for. The communications between the many artists involved are a particular source of hilarity as they bounce between near masturbatory compliments of each other’s artistry and catty, damning accusations of their peers in service of throwing one of them under the bus before the same is done to them. The result is a constant moving target of a resolution to a nearly unsolvable murder whose impact has completely shaken the art world and has the potential to destabilize the reign of the Medici family in Florence and stain the reputation of the church. Binet allows his characters, wonderfully modelled on their real life counterparts, to bask in the inimitable glory of their deliciously grandiose statements that lap up the drippings from their own egos and spew them back into a world unprepared. Perspective(s) is a thoughtful and considered tale of mystery and intrigue, gift-wrapped in luscious prose with a touch of flair for the dramatic that only a true artist could convey.

Thank you to both Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of what is sure to end up as one of my favourite works of the year. And of course, thank you to Laurent for sharing the wild depths of his mind with all of us and allowing us to wrap ourselves up in his words.