Two Art Historical Thrillers Set During the Italian Renaissance
Raphael
Painter in Rome: a Novel. About the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo as they go head to head in the halls of the Vatican.
Editor’s Choice from Historical Novels Review
Winner of Earphones Award from AudioFile for outstanding audio book
Currently being translated into two languages (so far!)
Oil and Marble
A Novel of Leonardo & Michelangelo: While Leonardo is painting the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo is just down the street carving the David.
Los Angeles Times Bestseller
One of Hudson Booksellers Best Books of 2016
Translated into 6 languages
In development as a feature film by Pioneer Pictures
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Oil and Marble is available in paperback, hardcover, ebook, and audio book - in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovakian, Czech, Turkish, and coming soon in Russian
(If you order using some of the links below, the author will receive a small extra commission at no extra cost to you!)
Buy Raphael Today
Raphael, Painter in Rome is available in Hardcover, e-book, and Audible. It will also coming soon in Czech and Slovakian (check back soon for more languages)
Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo
Living at the foot of his misshapen block of marble, Michelangelo struggles until the stone finallybegins to speak. Working against an impossible deadline, he begins his feverish carving.
Meanwhile, Leonardo's life is falling apart: he loses the hoped-for David commission; he can't seem to finish any project; he is obsessed with his ungainly flying machine; he almost dies in war; his engineering designs disastrously fail; and he is haunted by a woman he has seen in the market--a merchant's wife, whom he is finally commissioned to paint. Her name is Lisa, and she becomes his muse.
Leonardo despises Michelangelo for his youth and lack of sophistication. Michelangelo both loathes and worships Leonardo's genius.
In her brilliant debut, Storey brings early 16th-century Florence alive, entering with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters, creating a stunning art history thriller. From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself.
Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David. Even though his impoverished family shuns him for being an artist, he is desperate to support them.
Oil and Marble is the story of their
nearly forgotten rivalry.
Raphael, Painter in Rome
Michelangelo painting the Sistine Ceiling, while Raphael decorates the pope's private apartments.
As Raphael strives toward perfection in paint, he battles internal demons: his desperate ambition, crippling fear of imperfection, and unshakable loneliness. Along the way, he conspires with cardinals, scrambles through the ruins of ancient Rome, and falls in love with a baker’s-daughter-turned-prostitute who becomes his muse.
With its gorgeous writing, rich settings, endearing characters, and riveting plot, Raphael, Painter in Rome brings to vivid life these two Renaissance masters going head to head in the deadly halls of the Vatican.
Another fabulous art history thriller by the bestselling author of Oil and Marble, featuring the master of Renaissance perfection, Raphael
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here, in Raphael, Painter in Rome, Storey tells of its creation as never before: through the eyes of Michelangelo’s fiercest rival—the young, beautiful, brilliant painter of perfection, Raphael. Orphaned at age eleven, Raphael is determined to keep the deathbed promise he made to his father: become the greatest artist in history. But to be the best, he must beat the best, the legendary sculptor of the David, Michelangelo Buonarroti.
When Pope Julius II calls both artists down to Rome, they are pitted against each other: