A light on the painting but not only.

I do not think the title behind the action developed in this novel by Dominique Fernandez is the primary teaching of this work. Because it must be said, for much of the novel, we are dealing with a connoisseur of painting, trying to make us love the paintings by Nicolas Poussin by carefully explaining their significance to the profane in painting, myself included. Nicolas Poussin's not the only painter highlighted in this novel, there are also CARAVAGE, Simon Vouet and others less known. What is amazing is that the reproductions of these works are in black and white in the book, because how admire the painting except through drawing and more importantly, the play of colors.

I will not tell you the story in my own way, the back cover and other commentaries refer widely. Except to remind the narrator puts us in 1932 when Italy was already under the fascist Mussolini cutting. Romano and Igor studying painting in Rome in everyone recognize their addiction but must hide to spin "The love that dare not speak its name." Igor is a spy in the pay of the Stalinist regime in the new Soviet Union, he takes with him in Russia Romano hoping there in a 1924 Act inverts are free ... Alas, they will learn the hard way that in this Plan on there as one of the freedoms in general, the Bolshevik Stalinism has nothing to envy to Mussolini fascism.

The narrator (Romano) is always placed in an open position, opening his companion without scenes especially sulfur, openness to Western art, openness in Soviet art ... He embarks in this spy story of love, the awakening will be brutal alas.