The Wedding: An Encounter with Jan Van Eyck

The Wedding is a great teen read--Giovanna, the fourteen-year old heroine, has spirit and life, and from her first words (she tells her own story), you fall in love with her. Everything and everyone in this book is bursting with life. Living in a time when females married young, Giovanna, who is born into a wealthy merchant family, must choose between two suitors, one quiet and sensitive, the other, handsome and daring. Elizabeth Rees not only sees into the hearts of her characters, she also is a painter with words, creating a fifteenth-century Bruges that is totally alive and believable. Her portrait of the painter Van Eyck is so convincing because she has a painter's understanding of who an artist is and how an artist works. And as if it isn't enough that he painted, The Wedding, one of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of all time, Van Eck was also a spy! The story moves at breakneck pace with many twists and turns. There is not a dull moment and teen readers will learn a lot of history, much about painting, and along the way they will be heart and soul with this spirited heroine as she decides her fate.

"The Wedding", with its rich period detail and colorful, romantic story, brings to life the characters in Jan van Eyck's masterpiece, "The Arnolfini Wedding." Elizabeth Rees's imaginative reconstruction of life in 15th century Flanders gives us a well-researched picture of the Burgundian court. But the focus of the novel is on the feelings of the 14-year-old girl, Giovanna, who appealingly narrates her own story. Using none of the artifically antique language found in some historical fiction, Rees's "The Wedding" is a dramatic,original tale that readers of all ages can savor. It is a beautiful novel. --Gerald J. Schiffhorst, Ph.D.