The protagonist of Picture This is Rembrandt's masterpiece Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Heller depicts the business transactions between Rembrandt and the Sicilian nobleman who commissioned the work, Don Antonio Ruffio, the artist's brilliant execution of the painting, his provocative conversations with his model, the succession of owners of the painting, and the fluctuating prices of the art work through three centuries.

Indeed, through the writer's vision, the painting becomes an epic hero who "after a journey of three hundred seven years, an odyssey much longer in time and miles than Homer's original and one richly provided with chapters of danger, adventure, mystery, and treasure, and with comical episodes of mistaken identity," comes to rest in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, where in a triumphant four-hour showing it enjoys the homage of 82,629 viewers.

Ironically, Heller's Rembrandt is a less vital character than the picture. He...