Inger Christensen manages to make wit, passion and questioning, and astonishing design serve each other’s ends as one, and she does it in a way that is utterly her own.
— W. S. Merwin
A captivating experimental novel about the Italian Renaissance by the Danish master, whose“sensuous language resonates with cosmic urgency” (Columbia Review)
The Painted Room is a magnificent three-part novel about the Italian Renaissance—specifically, the intrigue surrounding the frescoes that Andrea Mantegna painted on the walls of a famous bridal chamber in the ducal palace of the Gonzagas. Prince Lodovico invites Mantegna to his palace to decorate the chamber, and the paintings are slowly completed. The portraits of the duke and his family look so peaceful—you would never guess that a murder had just taken place. The duke’s secretary records the progress in his gossip-laden diary, while the story of the prince’s daughter, the dwarf Nana, digs deeper into darker motivations involving deceit, vendettas, an assassination, and the dalliances of Pope Pius II. Mantegna’s young son, Bernardino, helps complete the paintings and introduces a note of high fantasy into the narrative. What results is a beautiful yet startling picture of the Renaissance, as rich and colorful as the men and women depicted on the palace walls.
Inger Christensen manages to make wit, passion and questioning, and astonishing design serve each other’s ends as one, and she does it in a way that is utterly her own.
— W. S. Merwin
Christensen was a cosmophage, as the writer Wayne Koestenbaum de-scribed Susan Sontag—a world-eater. She was trained in German, mathematics, medicine and the violin; she read six modern languages and two ancient ones. She could explain the life cycle of rare freshwater sponges in dramatic detail. But her intellectual avidity came coupled with mischief, worldliness and generosity.
— Parul Sehgal, *The New York Times"
The inspiration for 'The Painted Room' is an elaborate 15th-century fresco famed for its trompe l’oeil effect, as the members of the ruling Gonzaga family it depicts seem to be standing in the room with you. Christensen’s cunning, jewel-like work builds on this illusionism, misting the lines between history and fairy tale.
