How can I find out which parts of this book are based on fact, and which are fiction?

You might see if there is any information here.

Although Stone worked from Michelangelo’s letters, I would suspect that any conversations would have to be fictional.

This is exactly why I stopped reading historical fiction. This sort of thing drives me nuts.

But how do we know that history isn’t all fiction, or that fiction is all history?

dun dun dun…

Try looking up reviews of the book, The New York Time’s ones are usually extensive, do some Googling, look up encyclopedia articles, read an actual biography. That’s what I do if I want to corroborate historical fiction.

@fundevogel The best and IMHO most valid historical fiction is where the author creates a minor character who does not affect the flow of historical events. The author is then telling two stories: the characters story which can be as the author wishes and the historical events which are faithfully adhered to. A good example of this is Ellis Peters’ “Brother Cadfael” series.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land true, but I’d rather just read the non fiction and know that this, for better or worse, is actually being presented as fact. Narrative tone and detail makes me suspicious. I even read a non fiction book that had me very suspicious of the level of narrative detail, but there it turned out that the detail was available from over 100 witness testimonies from a civil trial that lasted over a year.

I doubt so many historical events are so well documented from an eyewitness perspective.

@fundevogel I read both and I don’t rely on a historical fiction author to give me my basic facts. I read it more from the stanpoint of trying to spot the mistakes, as I do when watching films that are claiming to be historically based. Just an amusement.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land That’s a good way to go about it, I’m just too anal for it in books. For some reason it doesn’t bother me in movies, perhaps because I have such low expectations for accuracy in them anyway.

Ok, I guess what I really want to know is, has anyone out there read this book who actually knows enough about art history to tell me which parts are based on fact vs. fiction – or has anyone stumbled upon any articles that talk about this book and the factual/fictitious elements?