Vivant Denon, director of the Louvre during its very first golden age, was one of the most colorful figures in Europe during the French Revolution. He did everything for his great love, art, and spared no effort. The writer and translator Reinhard Kaiser tells for the first time Denon's astonishing life story—written so vividly and brilliantly that reading it becomes a great seduction. "I am just the man who happened to be in the right place at the right time," Denon humbly said of himself, naming his greatest talent: recognizing the opportune moment and not letting the opportunities that presented themselves slip away. Denon revered art in many ways—not as something divine, something fundamentally unattainable, but as a man reveres a woman he desires to possess.