"Matt O'Brien has a quiet life: A painting restorer with a particular love of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance, he toils away millimeter by millimeter, bringing old oils to new light. But one day he happens upon a painting in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum that is thick with centuries of yellowed varnish and dust.

As he uncovers the portrait of a mysterious, beautiful woman, he finds himself suffering from an urgent sense of deja vu coupled with the pain of falling in love with a person long dead. Meanwhile, strange things have been happening in the museum since the installation of a woodpaneled room from Gubbio called a studiolo.

As Matt increasingly seeks refuge in this magical room from the pressures of having potentially discovered a Leonardo da Vinci, the centuries slip away and he finds himself in the center of a love triangle, with Anna on one side and the Machiavellian knight Leandro, fighting for her fortune, on the other."--BOOK JACKET.