DEVIL’S MARK

1989: A workman fitting web amenities within the Vatican’s papal flats unearths a cloth-wrapped ebook in a move slowly area among rooms that had now not identified human presence for 425 years. To the workman and his relations, it is just an “old publication” which he provides to his sister simply because she likes books.

1995: Porter Blue, an artwork historian at (fictitious) Balfour university in Nashville, Tennessee, is going to Florence on sabbatical to put in writing a unique in response to the younger courting of Michelangelo and Contessina. He was once encouraged via the 1962 locate within the Church of Santo Spirito of a long-lost wood crucifix via Michelangelo and 4 diaries written by way of Contessina de Medici, daughter of the main robust guy in Renaissance Florence. it's within the lacking diary, quantity 4 in a sequence of 5 numbered volumes, he imagines he may well locate the tale in their romance..

A colleague introduces Blue to Theo Volmer, the director of the Uffizi Gallery which homes the prevailing 4 diaries. Volmer, the son of a Nazi who participated within the wholesale looting of works of art from Polish Jews, is far renowned for later returning those stolen works to the unique proprietors, or their heirs. Blue unearths him in my opinion likeable and charismatic, notwithstanding his wolf-like light grey eyes supply Volmer a traumatic aspect.

Three months after Blue’s arrival, a graduate scholar and rising love curiosity, Largo Kopacz, involves Florence in the course of Balfour’s spring holiday. The five-day vacation is prolonged whilst she discovers in Volmer’s domestic her great-grandparents’ such a lot prized portray, a piece stolen through the Nazis.

The arrival of an agent from Scotland backyard investigating an artwork forgery within the united kingdom indications the crumbling of Volmer’s conscientiously built façade. occasions amplify while Largo is kidnapped from a journey bus, and Blue has to be dissuaded from following a result in Volmer’s yacht berthed close to Venice. a fireplace at Volmer’s Fiesole house is suggestion to have taken his lifestyles. ahead of specialists could make confident id, the charred physique is cremated.

Largo escapes her captors and returns to Florence. She and Blue wrap up their days in Italy with a facet journey to Siena the place Blue discovers Contessina’s lacking diary in a book shop. After a few deliberation, he comes to a decision that the diary might be reunited with the opposite 4 diaries. He and Largo make the presentation to the performing director of the Uffizi and whereas they're in his place of work a wide vase of plant life is added, bearing birthday greetings to Largo. She is confident they're from Volmer and that he's alive. Blue and Largo go back to Nashville a number of days later the place he plans to accomplish his manuscript.

Blue’s novel turns into a part of the cloth of Devil’s Mark and close to the story’s finish unearths that Contessina conceived a baby by means of Michelangelo earlier than her prepared marriage to Piero Ridolfi, son of a sought after Florentine kin. past due in his lifestyles, as he's getting ready to start paintings at the dome of St. Peter’s, Michelangelo meets his son, now a cardinal, for the 1st time. Michelangelo locations Contessina’s fourth and such a lot revealing diary contained in the partitions of St. Peter’s, his desire being to conceal their mystery forever.