Benjamin Moser & Tico Seifert (18:30 BST)

In a terrific coup for festival-goers one of the outstanding scholars and curators of the Golden Age of Dutch painting, Tico Seifert, will be joining the Pullitzer prize-winning biographer and art explorer, Ben Moser, to talk about how the great 17th century Dutch masters, have shaped their lives and work.

Moser’s The Upside-Down World examines ‘17 artists and one mistress’ in a series of radical biographical portraits including of the three inter-connected geniuses Rembrandt, Vermeer and the artist of The Goldfinch, Carel Fabritius.

It was Seifert who persuaded The Mauritshuis in the Hague to lend The Goldfinch to the Scottish National Gallery in 2016. He will reveal what it took to lure one of the world’s rarest masterpieces to Scotland and the mainspring of his quest. Meanwhile, Moser, aged 25, had moved to the Netherlands to follow a love affair and ended up in love with a 400 year old painter, Rembrandt, who was also the focus of another ground-breaking exhibition in Edinburgh staged by Seifert - ‘Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master’.

In Conversation with James Knox, curator emeritus, the Fleming Collection.

Event sponsored by RNIB Connect Radio

This new event replaces that of Laura Cumming, who is sadly now unable to attend the book festival. 

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