A Portrait of the Artist as a (Wild) Young Man: My Life with Berti Spranger, a New Book by Eva Jana Siroka

    PRINCETON, NJ, July 22, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- In 1580, when Bartholomaus Spranger arrived in Prague, the newly established capital of the Holy Roman Empire teamed with activity. Here, the Flemish-born artist found a privileged position at the court of Rudolf II Habsburg. Spranger was virtually imprisoned in the royal castle studio for some seventeen years. His ringside seat in the emperor's private chambers provides a departure for Eva Jana Siroka's engrossing new novel, My Life with Berti Spranger (Jorge Pinto Books, paper, $14.95).

The sequel to Maddalena (2005) opens some four hundred and fifty years after Spranger left Rome for Vienna in 1575, when Pieter Van de Graeff, a Dutch billionaire art dealer, discovers his lost memoir. An invaluable document for European cultural studies and history of art, it is replete with the artist's musings on life, human obsession, and his colorful escapades. Worth millions on the art market, the manuscript dramatically changes Van de Graeff's life after Karolina, a Czech history student, begins translating the opus.

"The memoir is fictionalized," says Siroka, who has a PhD in art history from Princeton, "but is rooted in the culture of Rudolfine Prague and Spranger's patron's taste for exotica and erotica." The emperor spared no money until Correggio's famous paintings, Loves of Jupiter, were safe in his collection. One of them, Jupiter and Io, graces the title page of the catalog for The Habsburgs, a current art exhibition in Minneapolis.

Spranger's paintings, many of which were recently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have also been hanging--so-to-speak--in Siroka's head. "I had been carrying his paintings and drawings in my mind for decades. He is such a fascinating character, a court painter who served a cardinal, a pope, and two Holy Roman Emperors, that I knew he'd be a natural narrator for the sequel to Maddalena, given his privileged position at the Rudolfine court." For centuries, the once famous and much favored painter has been submerged in obscurity.

No longer. In promoting Bartholomaeus Spranger: Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague, the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Spranger a "brilliant star in a galaxy of artists surrounding Emperor Rudolf II, composing works imbued with eroticism and erudition. As the leader and founder of the Prague School, Spranger represents a major force in European art in the late sixteenth century."

My Life with Bertie Spranger straddles the centuries, jumping back and forth between events in sixteenth-century imperial Prague, and the modern story of a wealthy art dealer with lessons to learn from the libertine painter whose memoir traces an arc of increasing regret.

Spranger's and Rudolf's escapades burn deeply into the historic fabric of the novel. Siroka's writing is evocative and enjoyable, and it's easy to forget that it's based on scholarship. Berti is inspired by Siroka's extensive research for her doctoral thesis in the museums, libraries, photographic cabinets, and archives around the world, and her contacts with leading experts in the field. "After centuries of neglect, Sally Metzler's first English-language monograph on Spranger's art has finally paid homage to him," says Siroka, who has been smitten by the artist for decades. "As a scholar, I set Spranger's story firmly on historical grounds. As an artist and writer, I suffused it with the same titillating color as the artist endowed his mythologies for Rudolf. In My Life with Berti, Horace's famous simile 'ut pictura poesis' becomes 'As is painting so is prose.'"

Set against the backdrop of a dissolute court and an eccentric emperor increasingly less connected to his duties, Spranger, a chastened womanizer, falls in love with 14-year-old Christine, an intelligent young woman interested in collecting precious stones and minerals. Along the way, the artist hobnobs with the giants of the time. Spranger's "memoir," discovered by Van de Graeff in Vienna and drenched with the old man's fear of dying without confession and absolution, has resonant implications for the extremely wealthy bachelor coming to terms with his own complicated love life, particularly as the head of an important European art auction house.

Never told before, My Life with Berti Spranger is a rich tale of love, lust, and the ceaseless quest to find meaning in life. Eva Siroka has given us the gift of an art history course wrapped in a down-to-earth compelling story. One wonders, with some excitement, what she has in store for Book Three.

"Erudite, deftly crafted, and an inherently fascinating read from first page to last, 'My Life with Berti Spranger' is one of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory long after it is finished and set back upon the shelf. Certain to be an enduringly popular addition to personal, community and academic library Literary Fiction collections . . . enthusiastically recommended reading."
--Midwest Book Review

Eva Jana Siroka, an art historian and artist born in Bratislava, Slovakia, received her doctorate at Princeton University. A Renaissance scholar with interest in princely patronage, especially Rudolfine Prague, she has been drawn to Spranger's art for decades. In 2005, she published her novel Maddalena with the artist as a central character.

A professional artist with works in North America and Europe, she is currently preparing two exhibitions in Princeton and Toronto. Inspired by Spranger's original drawings and period prints, she has illustrated the current book and designed its cover.

For more information, visit http://evasiroka.com.

Media contact: Victor Gulotta
Gulotta Communications, Inc.
617-630-9286
http://www.booktours.com
victor(at)booktours(dot)com

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