Elizabeth Lowry wanted to write the sort of book that she would like to read. Her aim was to create characters whose personalities were exposed gradually and who proved so intriguing they compelled readers to continue turning the pages. This is exactly what she has done.

The Bellini Madonna is Elizabeth's debut novel, but it certainly won't be her last, as she's already working on her second novel and enjoying every moment of her new career as novelist.

Elizabeth, from Weston-on-the-Green, began jotting down ideas for her book while finishing her thesis, which compared the work of Henry James with Kipling's short stories. That was seven years ago and before the birth of her son William. Everything had to be put on hold for some years, especially when she obtained a fellowship at Greyfriars Hall, in the Iffley Road. But you can't keep a good idea down for ever, and there eventually came a moment when her novel simply had to be written.

"I just couldn't let my ideas for the novel go, and although my thesis was on literature, art is very much part of my life too. The yearning to do something with art grew and grew with such urgency that this novel just had to be finished," said Elizabeth, who admitted that there came a point when she knew those 20,000 words sitting in her computer gathering dust had to be reactivated. But not in a piecemeal fashion. If the novel was to work she had to discipline herself to write for a set number of hours a day.

This is exactly what she did. Despite her busy lifestyle, she knew room had to be made for her to write, and it was, by giving up something else - her leisure time.

"Call it my knitting time or my baking time, perhaps," she said with a smile, adding that the prospect of writing full-time was scary, particularly as it meant she had no guaranteed income once she made this decision. This, however, acted as a further incentive to get the book done.

The Bellini Madonna is a complex and ultimately tragic story that makes much of Elizabeth's love of both literature and art and the research she has done throughout her life. It also calls on her travels and experiences in both Venice and Italy. She chose Bellini because he has always been her favourite painter, and is the Renaissance artist most concerned with human beings, even when painting his sacred characters.

The central figure in this book is Thomas Lynch, a libidinous aesthete and non-achieving art historian in disgrace for his sexual misdemeanours and obsessed with proving the existence of an uncatalogued Madonna by the great Venetian Renaissance master.

Lynch's obsession leads him to Mawle, a run-down, rambling English country house in Berkshire, which is owned by the Roper family. It's there that he discovers the diary of the former owner of the house that puts him on the trail of the picture and immerses him in the lives, past and present, of the Ropers themselves.

Into the picture comes Anna, the aristocrat's timid great-granddaughter, whom he sees initially as crudely drawn, her body a confused web of badly balanced arcs and insufficient supporting stresses. Yet this sallow, unselfposessed woman draws him into a game of sexual cat-and-mouse.

Throughout the novel, we watch this egocentric man being drawn towards her, desiring her even, as Anna's charms (with the help of a few drops of grappa in his tea) gradually gain control.

Left alone without her, he would sink into a malaise and begin to see Mawle, with its long splintered corridors, as an unspeakably dreary vault of chafing shadows and teasing whispers. He gradually becomes surprised, in spite of himself, by the humanity of this girl.

It is only when Anna's actions bring him face to face with the Bellini, and he is able to hold the pulsating picture in his hands, that he realises just who the true Madonna is.

The bowed, painted head covered in a black robe and white cowl that emerged triumphant from a painted board wrapped in brown paper packing was his, but he no longer lusted after it. Only then could this man who wraps everything in a veil of words come to understand that art should be honest and embrace humanity and all its imperfections, and that this was something he'd never been able to do.

The Bellini Madonna is a quite remarkable debut novel - one which takes the reader into several worlds, each so perfectly drawn that you can smell the dusty rooms of Mawle, the fragrance of roses blooming in a secret garden and come to understand the complexities that drive the central characters towards their separate ends.

The Bellini Madonna is published by Quercus at £14.99.