The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession With A Lost Masterpiece

"Oh, to love anything as much as Laura Cumming loves Diego Velázquez. *The Vanishing Velázquez * follows a Victorian bookseller who acquires a painting that consumes him and then disappears; it’s part detective story, part meditation on the nature of art and its ability to transform us in very strange ways. But Cumming’s ineffable tenderness toward the painter elevates this to paean. By the time she describes bookseller John Snare — “He did not see the painting as a thing apart, remote from his own existence; it filled his mind as if it were a living being” — we know she is describing herself, too."