‘Portrait of an Unknown Lady’ by Maria Gainza    (2018) – 177 pages                       Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstad

This is a neat eloquent little Argentine novel about art fraud.

The best way for an aspiring artist to learn to paint like Renoir is to practice copying a painting by Renoir. However if someone did a superb job copying a Renoir, they might even be able to pass it off as the real thing. This is called forgery. Even better, an artist could paint a picture that looks like a Renoir but with a somewhat different subject matter. Perhaps they could pass that off as a Renoir. Renoir would be difficult even for an expert forger, but there are new names in the art world for whom it would be easier to forge their work.

Our female first person narrator works for Enriqueta Macedo who is Argentina’s preeminent expert in art authentication, a true great of the art world. Enriqueta Macedo is our narrator’s hero.

“She was no longer young, but there was still the impunity of beautiful people in the way she walked. . . She didn’t need to be liked by anyone; that was her strength.”

Later our narrator finds out that Enriqueta Macedo, upright and beyond reproach, had been giving certificates of authenticity to forged works of art.

“I very soon made it clear that I was at her disposal for whatever she should need; whether it be making coffee or carrying out an act of cold-blooded murder, she should do with me as she pleased. Enriqueta read me like a book.”

Later our narrator progresses on to even larger art frauds, one involving twenty-eight works by the artist known as Figari.

Throughout ‘Portrait of an Unknown Lady’, our author Maria Gainza has an over-the-top style of writing which is enjoyable to read.

“I was big enough to know that the truth is always something that does not smile.”

“As though truth were the be-all and end-all and not just another well-told story.”

Each of the various chapters of this novel has a different striking focus. But whatever this novel may lack in continuity it more than makes up for with its dramatic prose style.

“Characters with precisely wrought histories, linear psychologies, and coherent ways of behaving are one of literature’s fallacies.”

Grade:    A-