Why am I passionate about this?

For four decades, I have written about art for publications in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. I have interviewed, among other artists, Frank Stella, Mary Ellen Mark, Dale Chihuly, Deng Lin (the daughter of Deng Xiaoping), the most celebrated Vietnamese contemporary painters, and the leading Japanese ceramicists. My ideal vacation is to wander the cobblestone streets of Italy, walking into a church to see the art of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Bernini. On a trip to Venice, I saw the immense illusionist ceiling painting by Giovanni Fumiani in the church of San Pantalon. Looking up at angels swirling in heaven, the idea for my second novel was born. 


I wrote

The Three Deaths of Giovanni Fumiani

By Jeffrey Hantover,

Book cover of The Three Deaths of Giovanni Fumiani

What is my book about?

“Fumiani is dead…again.” In 1706, the artist Giovanni Fumiani fell to his death while painting the immense ceiling of Venice’s…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Horse's Mouth

Jeffrey Hantover Why did I love this book?

Gulley Jimson is an unforgettable character that has stuck with me for over a half-century. Thief, con man, “dirty old man with his ignorant prejudices,” and self-proclaimed genius who hasn’t sold a painting in fifteen years, he opened my eyes to the beauty of the ordinary world. Constantly painting in his mind, imagining a painting by simply touching the canvas, he is fascinated by the light and color in all he sees. This loveable rogue, spouting the words and ideas of “Billy” Blake and Spinoza, connives to find a studio wall large enough for his sure-to-be masterpiece.

Read this book slowly; there is wit and wisdom to be savored in almost every line. If you underlined all the great lines, every page would look like a Venetian blind.

By Joyce Cary,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Horse's Mouth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Horse's Mouth, famously filmed with Alec Guinness in the central role, is a searing portrait of the artistic temperament.

Gulley Jimson is the charming, impoverished painter who cares little about the conventional values of his day. His unfailing belief that he must live and paint according to his intuition without regard for the cost to himself or to others, makes him a man of great, if sometimes flawed, vision.

But with an admirable drive for creation comes an astonishing hunger for destruction. Is he a great artist? A has-been? Or an exhausted, drunken ne'er-do-well?

As Gulley Jimson criss-crosses London…


Book cover of Headlong

Jeffrey Hantover Why did I love this book?

I am married to an auction veteran and have written on art and antiques in an earlier life so Frayn’s satirical farce hits all the right notes for me. A farce without slamming doors but plenty of misunderstandings and self-inflicted confusion.

Martin Clay, a philosopher turned amateur art historian and art expert, tumbles down the rabbit hole of self-delusion as he convinces himself that a painting he barely glimpsed is a lost Bruegel. He searches countless documents to find the facts that he twists to prove his hunch leading the reader on a deep dive into Dutch political and art history. Moral equivocation, adultery, tax evasion, double-dealing, plot twists and turns—everything a good farce should be.

By Michael Frayn,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Headlong as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Headlong begins when Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, believes he has discovered a missing masterpiece. The owner of the painting is oblivious to its potential and asks Martin to help him sell it, leaving Martin with the chance of a lifetime: if he could only separate the painter from its owner, he would be able to perform a great public service, to make his professional reputation, perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. But is the painting really what Martin believes it to be? As Martin is drawn further into…


Book cover of The Idol Hunter

Jeffrey Hantover Why did I love this book?

For my high school sophomore history teacher, world history was only Greece under Pericles and England under Elizabeth I. I went to Greece under her spell, and ever since, I have been drawn to books about Greece—fiction and non-fiction.

This book is about a fictional Greek island at the end of the Ottoman empire, an English con man caught up in his archaeological con, a beautiful artist (played by a young Helen Mirren in the film version), greedy government officials, and an informer who fears for his life is our unreliable narrator. It makes for an engrossing novel of adventure and ideas that holds up on a second reading after over forty years. 

By Barry Unsworth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Idol Hunter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NY 1980 first edition. Simon Schuster. Hardcover octavo. Fine in Fine dj.


Book cover of Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell

Jeffrey Hantover Why did I love this book?

One of my favorite poets writing about one of my favorite artists. Cornell’s mysterious, alluring dreamscapes in his delicately crafted boxes meet their soulmate in the prose poems of Simic. In this work of only seventy-seven pages of short meditations on Cornell’s life, inspiration, and method, Simic creates the poetic equivalent of Cornell’s visual art. Simic recognizes, as did Cornell, that “The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen, if recognized.”

By Charles Simic,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dime-Store Alchemy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now in Paperback

In Dime-Store Alchemy, poet Charles Simic reflects on the life and work of Joseph Cornell, the maverick surrealist who is one of America’s great artists. Simic’s spare prose is as enchanting and luminous as the mysterious boxes of found objects for which Cornell is justly renowned. 


Book cover of The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

Jeffrey Hantover Why did I love this book?

I have never been able to look at Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and child the same after reading this brilliant and controversial book. I promise your eyes will be opened as well. These paintings were not simple religious decoration. Christ’s genitalia, exposed or covered, was a visible element in theological arguments in the Renaissance about the humanity of Christ. In our secular world, Steinberg argues, we have lost sight of the sexual component of these images. Steinberg’s breadth of learning is astounding, and the extensive footnotes are as stimulating as the text.  

By Leo Steinberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Steinberg argues in this work that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.


Explore my book 😀

The Three Deaths of Giovanni Fumiani

By Jeffrey Hantover,

Book cover of The Three Deaths of Giovanni Fumiani

What is my book about?

“Fumiani is dead…again.” In 1706, the artist Giovanni Fumiani fell to his death while painting the immense ceiling of Venice’s San Pantalon. When he turns up dead again four years later on the Guidecca, the parish priest asks Stefano Bigio, an impoverished nobleman, to unravel the circumstances of the artist’s deaths and disappearance. So begins a journey into the corrupt underbelly of the dying Republic of Venice. Lies, murder, and the ambition of the powerful block Bigio’s way. He has no choice but to seek clues to the mystery in the city’s magnificent art to which he has paid little attention.

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Brighter Than Her Fears

By Lisa Ard,

Book cover of Brighter Than Her Fears

Lisa Ard Author Of Brighter Than Her Fears

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Avid reader History nut Golfer Bike tour guide

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.

Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by learning to farm tobacco, campaigning for the city’s first public schools, and immersing herself in the large and divisive Carter family. But marriage offers a tenuous promise of security. When tragedy strikes, Alice turns to the courts to fight for her independence and discovers an unexpected love.

Lisa Ard's debut…

Brighter Than Her Fears

By Lisa Ard,

What is this book about?

The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.

When her father dies and the family inn falls to ruin in 1882, western North Carolina, thirty-year-old Alice Harris is compelled to marry Jasper Carter, a Civil War veteran twice her age. Far from home and a stranger in a new family, Alice remakes herself. She learns to farm tobacco, mothers her stepson, and comes to love her husband.

However, Alice uncovers pending trouble with the family's land holdings, which threatens their livelihood on the farm. The growth…


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