Characters Bios

you can read it from the FIRST CHAPTER here.

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and constant modifications

Laurent D'Allegro is the main character of "the last canvas".

Son of Carlo D'Allegro, Italian, and Catherine Mortinné, French -- who were never married and are now separated in the condition of "cordial opponents".

Born prematurely in 1975, during his mother's holidays on the tropical resort island of Punaouilo in the Pacific Ocean, where he lived until the age of 8 in idyllic isolation, when he moved to the French countryside.

There he attended a rural school, where he was constantly bullied but found some compensation in the swimming pool; having quickly won the Junior Championship, when everyone foresaw a steady trajectory until an Olympic swimmer, Laurent suddenly and without explanation dropped the competitions, to never return.

The melancholic countryside and the distance to the sea were his first trauma, and then the sudden departure of his father, followed by an episode of extreme violence in his teens, about which he never spoke to anyone.

With his best friend and boyfriend since their teens -- Angelo Vivace, with whom he experienced a troubled romance for 8 years --, Laurent attended the School of Journalism in Vice City, which he gave up to pursue a promising career as a visual artist, keeping his literary writings only as a hobby.

 "the last canvas" we will follow the story of Laurent's parents and his childhood in the Indian Ocean, his adolescence in rural France, the years of madness and discoveries in metropolitan Vice City, a successful if scandalous career in the fine arts and his many failures and dellusions in love, the years during which he roamed the world and several beds, until finally buildind his ideal home and studio and establishing himself in Samsara Heights -- to again fall in love and see his life turn upside down.

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Carlo D'Allegro, the "Hermit of the Brushes", is a painter renowned for his poignant art of extreme concision, often described as a reclusive master, and by some as an enlightened being.

Born in Italy, at the age of four he went to live with his grandfather Tarso -- a wise, silent and resigned widower, if a bit strict and stern -- on a small farm in the Apennines, after his parents died in a ship accident.

In his spare time, after having helped his grandfather in the small farm's various tasks, Carlo drew everything he saw around him - and having once sent his sketches to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he obtained a scholarship and moved to France in 1969, where he lived for six years.

By accepting the invitation to go to Asia to join his former colleague and best friend Armand de Montbelle, Carlo radically changes his life, finding love and a refuge on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, the Île du Blanchomme, in 1974. He later moved to Punaouilo on the Pacific Ocean, where he lived with Catherine Mortinné, with whom he had a son, Laurent.

Only five years after returning to France, Carlo left home without any explanation nor known destination. Laurent was 13 years old then.

He is one of the few living painters to have one of his works sold for more than a million dollars. He finally returned to the high mountains of his childhood, where he currently lives isolated from the world in the modest farm he inherited from his grandfather, where he set up his studio.

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Catherine Mortinné, French writer, author of many bestsellers translated into several languages.

Daughter of Celeste Mortinné, an ex-theater diva, though born in a golden cradle, she has always lived with a fundamental contradiction: lots of money and little love, never having been legally recognized as her father's daughter. Currently, she fights in court for a posthumous paternity acknowledgement process.

Allegedly on vacations in the Indian Ocean, in 1974 she meets Carlo D'Allegro, a penniless Italian hunk, with whom she did not intend to have more than a few nights of pleasure without commitment. But when she became pregnant and had a son, Laurent, her burgeoning career of refined intellectual was aborted, and she went on to write tragic novels with intricate plots, set in exotic landscapes, which she always denied being autobiographical.

Due to a poor health condition and other family circumstances, it took Catherine several years to to return to France, where eventually she built an international reputation as a Great Dame of the Letters. In 2008 she goes to Russia to promote her novels and, falling in love with a young writer she decides to accept an invitation to teach at the State University and live in St. Petersburg, taking her time to conduct a private investigation that she keeps as big secret.

Back to France in 2012, she bought the Chenin Blanc Nectary and converted it into her home and studio on the French countryside, where she lives with her most recent protégé, Jules, and Jim, the gardener. 

She is currently helping adapt her bestseller "On the ex-diva's divan" for the movies.

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Armand de Montbelle, French, also known as Armand Purlux Drurien, architect and honorary ambassador of UNICEF, winner of the Pritzker Prize.

Son to the banker Gaston de Montbelle -- lord of the Chateau de Montbelle and owner of extensive agricultural lands, forest reserves and a reasonable community of employees and their families in the borough of the chateau, and numerous properties in various countries - and Marie Heléne Purlux Drurien, daughter of Baron Purlux Drurien de SanSerenite.

Armand graduated in Architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Carlo D'Allegro, who for many years was his best friend. After a family crisis and his trip to India in 1973, searching for peace of mind, he decided to quit restoring castles and building mansions, according to his father's will, to devote himself to a global scale program of affordable housing for the poor, with the highest possible quality.

In his youth, he took refuge in Asia after the death of his mother, and for a long time visited India in search of spiritual guidance, due to the painful disintegration of his family and his quest to accept his sexuality and other contradictions between his deeper aspirations and the social means from which he originally came from.

He currently lives alone in a small and very functional house he designed and built on Ensamma ljusets ö, a small island off the Swedish coast, in the Baltic Sea.

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Angelo Assai Vivace, Italian journalist, author, host of a tv progam and "heartthrob" cover, with frequent appearances in the gossip columns and glossy magazines.

In 1990, at the age of 15, upon the death of his mother Angelo moved to the interior of France, when his father decided to open a restaurant on the shores of a lake, on the neighboring property in which Laurent and Catherine lived. He was informally adopted by her right after the two boys assumed their love relationship -- which was unacceptable to Edoardo, Angelo's father.

Having been influenced, encouraged and supported by the mother of his boyfriend, and by her success and money, Angelo decided to attend the Journalism and Literature Schools, and being highly seductive, convinced Laurent, whom he had already been dating for years, to go together overseas and try a new life in a large urban center, away from their families. They moved to Vice City in 1994.

After eight years of a troubled relationship, Angelo finally took a turn in his life and career away from Laurent, whom he had "used and tormented for too long", as he confessed at the end of their love affair.

Currently in a credibility crisis in his career for having starred an underwear campaign, causing great controversy and withdrawal of some of his tv program's main sponsors, he is also facing a personal and family life's failure.

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