About
Laura holds a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University and is an award-winning, USAToday bestselling historical novelist. Laura has taught college students in the U.S. and in Italy. She is a longtime trusted guide in the world of cultural travel and authentic shopping, known for her Authentic Arts guidebook series that includes MADE IN ITALY and other guides. She has been a columnist for National Geographic Traveler and Italy Magazine, and has also developed lessons for TED-Ed.
As a historical novelist, Laura’s passion is bringing the stories of art history to life. Two of her novels, THE GONDOLA MAKER and THE PAINTER’S APPRENTICE, are set in artisan workshops of 16th-century Venice. Laura’s novel THE GIANT immerses readers in the world of Renaissance Florence, following the amazing story of the creation of Michelangelo’s David. Laura’s novel THE NIGHT PORTRAIT tells the story of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with the Ermine, following the portrait from its debut in 15th-century Milan to its theft during World War II. Another dual-timeline novel, THE STOLEN LADY, takes readers on the incredible journey of the Mona Lisa from its creation in sixteenth-century Florence to its wartime hiding places in the French countryside. Laura’s latest novel, THE LAST MASTERPIECE, brings readers along on a heart-pumping adventure up the Italian peninsula during the German occupation, when some of the world’s most important works of art stood in the crosshairs of history.
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THE LAST MASTERPIECE
In a race across Nazi-occupied Italy, two women—a German photographer and an American stenographer—hunt for priceless masterpieces looted from the Florentine art collections.
In the summer of 1943, Eva Brunner is taking photographs of Nazi-looted art hidden in the salt mines of the Austrian hinterland. Across the ocean in Connecticut, Josephine Evans is working as a humble typist at the Yale Art Gallery.
When both women are called to Italy to contribute to the war effort, neither imagines she will hold the fate of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces torn from the Uffizi Galleries and other Florentine art collections in her hands.
But as Italy turns from ally to enemy and Hitler’s plan to destroy irreplaceable monuments and works of art becomes frighteningly clear, each woman’s race against the clock—and against one another—might demand more than they were prepared to give.
The Last Masterpiece takes readers on a heart-pumping adventure up the Italian peninsula, where nothing is as it seems and some of the greatest works of art and human achievement are at stake. Who might steal and who might save a work of art—and at what cost?
Inspired by the incredible true story of the Monuments Women, the Fifth Army WACs, and the looted Florentine art collections during World War II, the latest historical novel by USA Today bestselling author and art historian Laura Morelli plunges readers into the heart of war-torn Italy.
