Rembrandt was a master of illusion, lauded for his storytelling, his brutal self-portraits and soulful renderings. It was the Baroque painter’s mastery of the chiaroscuro technique that cast him as “the magician of light and shadow”; a skill that would allow him to employ perspective in his art. This debut novel, however, is not penned from the perspective of the artist but of spurned lover.
Set in 1642 during the Dutch Golden Age, we meet Geertje, a widow and bereaved mother, who is to become housemaid to the quixotic painter. Before long, Rembrandt finds himself grieving the death of his young wife and three children lost during childbirth. This shared grief propels the pair into a passionate love affair so that Geertje becomes both maid and mistress. That is, until she finds herself deceived by this master of illusion. When Geertje seeks to enact justice, the mercurial painter exacts revenge with devastating consequences.
Leahy has chosen powerful source material for her novel. She sets herself in a sumptuous sensory world of silks, furs and bloody emesis, where men tumble out of taverns, spewing into canals, grabbing young women by the waist, and passersby hike their skirts to avoid the rush of sewage. Light and shadow, wealth and poverty, justice and injustice – Leahy paints it all.
The Cork author proves herself an expert craftsperson in rendering this world on the page. “The tiles around the hearth have been chipped and crazed for as long as I can remember. A leaping stag bears a crack down the centre and a gambolling dog has a bloom of chalky whiteness where his tail should be,” she writes. The rich, earthy tone of her prose pays tribute to the ochre and umber hues of the master’s palette.
If like me, you do not typically reach for historical fiction, I urge you to try this one. Desire, grief and betrayal are at the core of this novel, as is the tenacity of women against male subjugation. “Plus ça change,” it would seem to say. While the make-up of our societies and environments may change over time, Leahy casts light on the eternality of the constitution of the passionate, hurt, needing human soul. And the peril of loving an artist.
