Garden of Love

Garden of Love is a novel about the life of the famous baroque painter and diplomat P.P. Rubens from his stoicism to the late hedonism, with a fictional history of a painting after which the novel was named. The story begins in Antwerp in 1625, when the main character of this novel, Rubens's wife Isabella Brant quite by accident discovered his infidelity. The marital and life drama of this woman is framed with a number of other love stories where readers can recognize...
More Description

Garden of Love is a novel about the life of the famous baroque painter and diplomat P.P. Rubens from his stoicism to the late hedonism, with a fictional history of a painting after which the novel was named. The story begins in Antwerp in 1625, when the main character of this novel, Rubens's wife Isabella Brant quite by accident discovered his infidelity. The marital and life drama of this woman is framed with a number of other love stories where readers can recognize models from classical and contemporary world literature (from "Romeo and Juliet" to the "The Girl with the Pearl Earring"). All love plots should end at a garden party hosted by the Mayor of Antwerp Nicholas Rockox. But just as the party is about to begin, the story moves to another place and another time, to the home of the Mayor of Coral Gables, a municipality of Miami, who celebrated the beginning of the new millennium on 31st December 2000. At this new garden party where Rubens's chubby beauties will be replaced by modern fashion models to whom high heels became body parts, will be the anti-climax of the funny story lines from the 17th century.

Excerpts from Reviews (English translation):"Garden of Love is that rare book that both the so-called ordinary readers and theoreticians will ravel in. The book which is read with the purest of smiles of literary pleasure and immensely funny and unpretentiously clever psychologically deep and turned to history at the same time. However, essentially, it is modern both in terms of its implicit value system and at the literary, artistic and structured level. All those who laugh and know how to truly enjoy in literature I warmly recommend not missing Garden of Love." (Ivan Radosavljević, "Stubovi kulture").

"More clearly than in "The Theft" by Peter Kerry, Garden of Love as oil on canvas is a metaphor of unfathomed possibilities of another artistic medium, the word. The canvas is a metamorphosis of prose and its skills to change itself over and over again, to interpret itself and comment on it. Rubens as a painter character is, however, aware that the past has to be altered as one goes along so as not to clash with the present." (Vladislava Gordić Petković, "Politika").