Portrait Of A Conspiracy

In 15th century Florence, five women and a legendary artist weave together a dangerous plot that could bring peace - or get them all killed. Seeking to wrest power from the Medici, members of the Pazzi family slay the beloved Giuliano. But Lorenzo de' Medici survives the attack and seeks revenge on everyone involved, plunging the city into murderous chaos. Bodies are dragged through the streets, and no one is safe. Five women steal away to a church to ply their craft in secret. Viviana, Fiammetta, Isabetta, Natasia and Mattea are painters, not allowed to be public with their skill but freed from the restrictions in their lives by their art. When a sixth member of their group, Lapaccia, goes missing and is rumored to have stolen a much sought-after painting before she vanished, the women must venture out into the dangerous streets to find their friend. They will have help from one of the most renowned painters of their era: the peaceful and kind Leonardo da Vinci. It is under his tutelage that they flourish as artists and with his access that they infiltrate some of the highest, most secretive places in Florence, unraveling one conspiracy as they build another in its place. Vibrant and absorbing, Portrait Of A Conspiracy is the first novel in Donna Russo Morin's Da Vinci's Disciples series.

In *The Van Gogh Conspiracy,* the discovery of a "new" painting by Van Gogh hidden in the barn of a rural French farmhouse sets the art world spinning. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam authenticates the painting, and the poor French family in whose barn it was discovered stands to collect millions once the painting is auctioned. But a holocaust survivor living in New York claims the painting is actually his, and was stolen from him by the Nazis. He hires a team to help him prove that the "bill of sale" he has in Van Gogh’s handwriting is authentic. The international investigation leads to the discovery of another never-seen-before Van Gogh, and the revelation that someone working in the Van Gogh Museum has access to an entire horde of famous painting stolen by the Nazis during World War II—and has been secretly sending them to former Nazis around the world so that they can sell them at auction and make millions.

Theory Conspiracy provides a state-of-the-art collection that takes stage on the meeting and/or battlegrounds between conspiracy theory and theory-asconspiracy. By deliberately scrambling the syntax—conspiracy theory cum theory conspiracy—it seeks to open a set of reflections on the articulation between theory and conspiracy that addresses how conspiracy might rattle the sense of theory as such. In this sense, the volume also inevitably stumbles on the recent debates on postcritique. The suspicion that our ways of reading in the humanities have been far too suspicious, if not paranoid, has gained considerable attention in a humanities continuously questioned as superfluous at best and leftist and dangerous at worst. The chapters in this volume all approach this problematic from different angles. It features clear engaging writing by a set of contributors who have published extensively on questions of paranoia, conspiracy theory, and/or the state of theory today. This collection will appeal to readers interested in conspiracy theories, critical theory, and the future of humanities.

In The Conspiracy of Modern Art the Brazilian critic and art-historian Luiz Renato Martins draws on Marxist theory to invite us to see familiar pictures anew.

"Art and Camille team up once again to solve a large museum theft, using one of the biggest heists in history to help them solve the case"--

In a studiolo behind a church, six women gather to perform an act that is restorative, powerful, and illegal. They paint. Under the tutelage of Leonardo da Vinci, the six show talent and drive equal to that of any man, but in Renaissance Florence they must hide their skills, or risk the scorn of the city. A commission to paint a fresco in Santo Spirito is announced and Florence’s countless artists each seek the fame and glory this lucrative job will provide. Viviana, a noblewoman freed from a terrible marriage and now free to pursue her artistic passions in secret, sees a potential life-altering opportunity for herself and her fellow female artists. The women first speak to Lorenzo de’ Medici himself, and finally, submit a bid for the right to paint it. But the church will not stand for women painting, especially not in a house of worship. The city is not ready to consider women in positions of power, and in Florence, artists wield tremendous power. Even the women themselves are hesitant; the attention they bring upon themselves will disrupt their families, and put them in danger. All the while, Viviana grows closer to Sansone, her soldier lover, who is bringing her joy that she never knew with her deceased husband. Power and passion collide in Donna Russo Morin's 'The Competition', a sumptuous historical novel of shattering limitations, one brushstroke at a time.

Features the text of a January 22, 1807 message written by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) concerning the Burr Conspiracy, provided online as part of the Avalon Project of the Yale University Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. Discusses an alleged conspiracy by American political leader Aaron Burr (1756-1836) to create a new country in the southwestern United States.