LOVE, THE PAINTER’S WIFE & THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

A subtle and quietly compelling double look back: at the life of Piero della Francesco (d. 1492), then, from there, at the life of the Queen of Sheba in the tenth-century b.c.

From the moment Piero first sees the young Silvia, he wants to marry her, and he does so, even though she’s an orphan of mysterious origin, raised by monks. The marriage is happy except for two things: the pair remain childless; and Silvia fears that if Piero heeds those calling him to Rome to pursue his painting there, he will be tainted and corrupted by that sinful place. So, to keep him at home, she begins the Scheherazade-like tactic of writing the story of the Queen of Sheba from notes (provided by Fra Bartolomeo, one of the monks from her childhood) said to be those of a traveler to the east. What Silvia hopes is that her story will inspire Piero with ideas for paintings that he will start on right away, not in Rome, and so vivid is the tale she writes that Piero is indeed obsessed by it—as is Silvia, the teller of the tale, as the story becomes wholly intertwined with the novel itself. When Sheba’s king dies in battle, his daughter Bilqis is only 16, yet she must take over the reins of government as he had trained her in the years of her growing up. Like Silvia, Bilqis is lovely and sensitive; like Silvia, she has a mysterious mother; and, like Silvia, she loves a great man: Piero in Silvia’s case, King Solomon in that of Bilqis, whose long journey to Jerusalem—on diplomacy—and her stay there in the court of Solomon, both as diplomat and lover, are beautifully realized. The fate of each, Silvia and Bilqis, must be left for the reader to learn.

First fiction from French historian Armel (and biographer of Marguerite Duras): a skillful, knowledgeable, and moving double-historical.