The High Renaissance mode had warped into Mannerism, a style of affectless polish and gymnastic contortions whose preeminent exponents in Florence were Pontormo and his pupil Bronzino. Laurent Binet’s ...

The corpse is that of famous painter Jacopo Pontormo, a real figure of the Italian Renaissance, as are all of the novel’s characters. Eleven years before his death, Pontormo had been tasked with ...