Devil's Mark

Artwork stolen by the Nazis, a multi-million dollar forgery ring, a missing Medici diary and the kidnapping of a beautiful Jewish graduate student change the stakes when art professor Porter Blue takes a sabbatical to Florence, Italy intending to write a novel.

In 1962, a remarkable discovery is made in the bowels of the Church of Santo Spirito in Florence, Italy: a box containing four diaries from the hand of Contessina de’ Medici, the youngest daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, one of the most powerful men in Renaissance Italy. When museum scholars examine the diaries, numbered 1, 2, 3 and 5, they quickly reach a puzzling conclusion; diary number 4 is missing.

Interested in the youthful days of Michelangelo and the time he spent in the Medici Palace as a student in Lorenzo’s Academy of Ancient Art, university art historian Porter Blue is more than fascinated by the diary find. He receives a sabbatical from Balfour College and in December of 1995 goes to Florence to do research for a novel he wants to write on Michelangelo and his close relationship with Contessina. Through a colleague, Blue meets Theo Volmer, the charismatic director of the Uffizi Museum. When Largo Kopacz, one of his graduate students and an emerging love interest, comes to Florence during Balfour’s spring break, Blue’s research project pivots dramatically. While accompanying Blue to dinner at Volmer’s home in nearby Fiesole, she discovers a small fifteenth century painting once owned by her great-grandparents in Krakow, Poland. It was stolen by the Nazis in 1939.