As his obsession takes hold, the pace of the novel picks up too, a breathless rush of action, comic anguish and scholarly speculation. He pitches from gallery to museum to library delivering an extended history lesson on iconography, iconology, landscape and the ever elusive story in the Bruegel. At the heart of the novel is Martin's search for the meaning of the painting that has become his fate, his 'triumph and torment and downfall'. There follows much double-dealing, bamboozling and suppressed hysteria as Martin and the owner try to outwit each other. His intellectual dilettantism becomes focused by the arresting sight of a painting glimmering through the 'grimy pane of time' and he decides to secure the painting for the nation, and a fortune for himself, without letting the owner discover its true value. Youngish art historian Martin Clay (a Hugh Grant character gone to fat) identifies a lost Bruegel in a tumble-down country home. They're an invitation to interpretation and Frayn's narrator accepts this role with alacrity. But an enigmatic portrait, a picture of a dimly lit interior or frolicking peasants is a tale waiting to be told. Big religious representations and gaudy weight of literature behind them. With these paintings the author can step into a story rather than a myth. Michael Frayn has joined the Flemish fray in Headlong, where a Bruegel has a starring role.

Or Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring, which centres on Vermeer's prosperous household in Delft in the 1660s. Witness Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever, set in 1630s' Amsterdam where a painted portrait is the focus for a tale of doomed love. Dutch art has become fashionable with 90s novelists.

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