Painter to the King

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Description

This is a portrait of Diego Velazquez, from his arrival at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, to his death 38 years and scores of paintings later. It is a portrait of a relationship that is not quite a friendship, between an artist and his subject. It is a portrait of a ruler, always on duty, and increasingly burdened by a life of public expectation and repeated private grief. And it is a portrait of a court collapsing under the weight of its own excess.

Unfolding through series of masterly set-pieces and glancing sketches, this is a novel of brilliance, imagination and sheer style -- about what is shown and what is seen, about art and life.

Reviews

What especially thrills is Sackville's style, which revels in risk and play ... In Painter to the King Sackville has written not only by far the finest novel of its kind that I have ever read, but one of the finest historical novels of recent years. For her skill and daring, her grasp of both subject and form, and her masterly chiaroscuro of human failure and endeavour, she is as distinct among her peers as Velzquez was among his -- Sarah Perry * Guardian *
Working in luminous and meticulous prose, Sackville achieves an almost miraculous intimacy with her subject. Painter to the King is the most engrossing fictional study of visual art I have ever encountered, giving us not only a persuasive account of Velzquez's formation and milieu but a ravishing survey of the very substances and textures of his sensory world. It is, in its own right, an astonishing work of art -- Paraic O'Donnell
Sackville writes beautifully, imagining the court in painterly detail: its fashions, its stultifying formalities, its hierarchies and petty, poisonous rivalries. She has the art os weaving Velzquez's works [...] through the developing relationship, even friendship, of Diego and Felipe... Painter to the King is stately, [...] Sackville's summoning of time and place is exquisitely done -- Laura Freeman * Spectator *
Sackville's sumptuous verbal artistry both fills history's gaps, and offers via its kaleidoscopic language a response to the paintings' ever-shifting qualities... The novel flecks its pursuit of the artist, across paintings and documents, with the shimmer and dazzle of its rhapsodic prose -- Boyd Tonkin * Arts Desk *
The kind of novel that makes you fall in love with reading all over again: rich, kaleidoscopic, evocative and hugely moving. Painter to the King renders the past in intimate, exquisite, enthralling detail -- Alex Preston
For some years now, Amy Sackville has been known for the exquisite quality of her prose. With her third novel, she has tried something different, something more audacious, perhaps, and proves more than equal to the challenge. A work of great subtlety and sophistication, Painter to the King is a surprisingly tender portrait of a genius -- Rupert Thomson
An authentic glimpse into the painter's methods... Superb -- Antonia Senior * The Times *
Through Velazquez's eyes, we are shown the splendours and the miseries of Philip's life and court. We watch the unfolding of the artist's genius for depicting the physical reality of that world and its inhabitants. Sackville's prose summons up the Spanish past in rich and appropriately visual detail -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *
Sackville - a talented stylist - [shows us] the world as Velzquez does... where tiny details are always as significant as the whole picture... Rewarding -- Claire Allfree * Daily Mail *
Sackville triumphs... Stately, lush prose is interspersed with descriptions [and] Sackville uses language that is at once meticulous and rhapsodic -- Elizabeth Wassell * Irish Times *
Sackville's quick and lyrical style captures the heft and shape of seventeenth-century Spain without sacrificing lightness of touch, a quality she shares with Velzquez's -- Ben Eastham * TLS *
Painter to the King by Amy Sackville is one of the best * Vanity Fair *
A daring, utterly immersive study of the relationship between Velzquez and Philip IV -- Book of the Year selected by Justine Jordan * Guardian *
I loved Amy Sackville's Painter to the King * I Paper *
[It] observes the rise of Velzquez at the court of Philip IV, conjuring both his masterpieces and their subjects in meticulous and suitably ravishing prose -- Book of the Year selected by Paraic ODonnell * Irish Times *
Sackville's prose summons up the Spanish past in rich and appropriately visual detail * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to do an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford, and an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths. Her first novel was The Still Point, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize and won the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and her second was Orkney, which won a 2014 Somerset Maugham Award. www.amysackville.co.uk