The Lost Painting (13 page)

Correale was at the podium, looking plump and formal in a dark suit and tie, his reading glasses low on his nose. She heard him speaking about Italsiel’s new system of gathering scientific and technical information on works of art. Francesca scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Laura, ever punctual, had arrived in time to get a seat in the middle of the hall. Here and there among the crowd she spotted others she knew, professors and fellow students at the university. In the front row she noticed Calvesi, and she recognized nearby the fat, bejowled form of another Caravaggio scholar, Luigi Spezzaferro.

Correale had finished his speech and the director of the Capitoline had risen to introduce Denis Mahon. Francesca watched the elderly Englishman rise from the front row and move cautiously to the podium, cane in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. He adjusted his glasses, fussed with his papers, and peered out at the crowd. The hall grew quiet. Francesca did not know precisely how old Sir Denis was—in his early eighties, she’d heard. Everyone remarked on his age, and in the same breath on his astuteness of mind. He looked elfin to Francesca, his eyes bright and a small smile, almost mischievous, playing across his face.

His voice surprised her—its high, almost feminine register, without the watery quaver of old age. He spoke in Italian, flawlessly, with a British accent that Francesca found delightful. He noted that everyone was gathered here on this day because of his discovery, almost forty years ago, of the
St. John
hanging high on the wall of the mayor’s office, at a time when everyone else thought the original painting was at the Doria Pamphili. He said this without seeming to brag, even though his age and accomplishments would have allowed him that indulgence. He had a few barbs for what he called the “old barons” of the art world—Longhi and Lionello Venturi, both long dead—who had never openly acknowledged the authenticity of the Capitoline
St. John.

Francesca had imagined Mahon would give a short, unremarkable speech, the sort one often heard at such events. But he spoke at length, and midway through she saw how clear and sharp his mind had remained. The problem, he said, lay in the two payments of sixty and twenty-five scudi by Ciriaco Mattei for unspecified work to Caravaggio. The payments for
The Supper at Emmaus
and
The Taking of Christ,
said Mahon, seemed to accord well enough with Caravaggio’s other known fees, although perhaps one hundred twenty-five scudi for the
Taking
was a trifle low. But to assume that Ciriaco had paid only sixty scudi for
The Incredulity of St. Thomas
—of which the Mattei archive contained no mention—and a mere twenty-five scudi for the
St. John
made no sense at all. Both payments were, said Mahon, “by a wide margin, too little.”

Mahon proposed a different schedule of payments. He thought the Mattei family had probably never owned
The Incredulity of St. Thomas,
and that Baglione had erred in saying they had. He himself had never seen Baglione’s original handwritten manuscript in the Vatican library. Some young scholar might want to check the manuscript against the published versions. Perhaps there had been a transcription error, repeated through the centuries, in the printing of the book.

And then he suggested that it made more sense to regard the first payment of sixty scudi as being for the
St. John,
not
The Incredulity of St. Thomas.
The second, smaller sum of twenty-five scudi might represent an additional payment for the
St. John,
or perhaps an advance for
The Taking of Christ.

Mahon had challenged, in the same way Longhi might have, the conclusions in Correale’s symposium catalogue. He had advanced a new set of conclusions that, once articulated, seemed far more likely to be accurate.

Standing among the tightly packed listeners at the back of the hall, Francesca listened with half an ear as one after another of the scholars spoke, displaying their erudition. Some argued that Caravaggio had made preparatory drawings for his paintings; others disagreed. Some speculated that he’d had a bottega of sorts, a commercial workshop, which had produced authorized copies of his works, such as the Doria
St. John,
although no evidence for a workshop had ever turned up. The meeting went on for three hours. It grew warm in the hall. People shifted in their seats.

During a break in the proceedings, Francesca made her way up through the crowd to the front, where the eminent art historians were gathered, surrounded by others. She saw Laura standing near Calvesi and went up to them. Correale stood nearby, talking to someone she didn’t know. Their eyes met for a moment, and he looked away.

Luigi Spezzaferro, bespectacled, face flushed, wearing a billowing suit coat that bore traces of recent meals, bellied his way up to her. “Francesca Cappelletti?” he said, voice loud and heavy with a Roman accent. “Congratulations on your work. You should have come to me first, of course. I could have helped you with the bibliography: it would have been much better. You did pretty well, but you don’t know enough yet.”

A few minutes later, Francesca and Laura found themselves introduced to Denis Mahon. “Marvelous work,” he said to them with a warm smile. “I really must compliment you both. It is so important to have these dates.”

Francesca could feel herself blush, at once shy and proud.

Then Sir Denis said to them, “I wonder if you might have time tomorrow to lunch with me? There are some other matters I would like to ask you about.”

Francesca was taken aback by this invitation. She wondered if she’d understood correctly.

Laura said, “Yes, of course, it would be our pleasure.”

Francesca, nodding vigorously, stammered a simple assent.

“Tomorrow at one, let us say? I will meet you at the Hotel Senato.”

18

T
HE INVITATION BOTH EXCITED AND UNNERVED
F
RANCESCA.
I
T
was as if a grandmaster in chess had taken note of her talent and invited her to play a game. She was afraid of making a foolish mistake.

She met Laura the next day in front of the Albergo del Senato, in the Piazza della Rotunda. They had both arrived early; this was one appointment for which even Francesca would never have been late. Denis Mahon was himself early. In the hotel lobby they saw him sitting in an armchair, hands resting on his cane. He wore a heavy coat against the February chill. He seemed lost in thought, staring straight ahead.

They went over to him. He looked up, as if startled, and then smiled and said, “Ah, che piacere!” and rose slowly from the chair. He addressed them in the formal manner, shaking each woman’s hand in turn. They walked out of the hotel, Francesca on one side of the old man, Laura on the other, and went across the piazza toward Da Fortunato.

Inside the door, the manager greeted Sir Denis with a beaming smile and helped take the heavy coat off his shoulders. Photographs of Da Fortunato’s more famous clientele—actors, politicians, writers—hung in the entryway. Francesca saw a black-and-white photo of Mahon in a pin-striped suit, looking up at the camera with a grin, seated at a table with another man. Sir Denis paused briefly to cast an eye at the display of fresh fish on ice—sea bass, oysters, squid, shrimp with their carapaces intact. He seemed to lift his nose to catch the aromas in the air and rubbed his hands together. A man who liked to eat.

The manager escorted them to a table in the front room, near a window facing the street. Francesca had a tendency to chatter when she felt nervous, but that habit deserted her now. Both she and Laura sat solemnly, awkwardly, hands in their laps, too shy even to open the napkins until Mahon made a move. He seemed to realize their discomfort. He congratulated them again on their research. He asked about the Recanati archive, how they had tracked it down, how long they had spent there. He drew them out with ease and deftness, asking their opinions on various matters concerning the Mattei family and Caravaggio. Did it seem possible to them that Ciriaco had actually owned
The Incredulity of St. Thomas
by Caravaggio, as Baglione had written? It might be worthwhile, he suggested, for one of them to perform the research he’d suggested and check Baglione’s original manuscript. It might contain some clues, a note in the margin perhaps.

The dishes arrived as they talked—for the Englishman, an antipasto of mixed seafood marinated in olive oil and lemon juice, followed by medallion of veal with lemon and capers and a plate of spinach repassato, cooked with garlic and oil. He ate slowly, but with obvious pleasure, commenting on the excellence of the seafood, the tenderness of the veal. Laura ordered a simple plate of pasta and Francesca just a salad with ruchetta and Parmigiano. She took only a few bites and moved the rest around on her plate, listening intently to Mahon’s every word. It seemed surreal to her, this lunch with Denis Mahon asking them questions, wanting to hear their opinions, as if he regarded them as his peers.

It was apparent that he had read their essay with great care. Not even the smallest item in the footnotes had escaped his notice. In addition to the dates, he told them, they had verified Longhi’s suspicion that Hamilton Nisbet had bought the original
Taking of Christ
in 1802. And that meant that the Odessa version had to be a copy. It had turned up in Paris in the 1870s, while Hamilton Nisbet’s heirs still had possession of the original.

Francesca mentioned that she had come across the essay by Hugh Brigstocke concerning the Hamilton Nisbet collection.

“Hugh Brigstocke?” said Mahon. “Yes, I know him. He has left the Scottish National Gallery. He’s at Sotheby’s now, in charge of cataloguing Old Masters.”

“Brigstocke had written that
The Taking of Christ
went up for auction in 1921,” continued Francesca. “What happened to it after that?”

Mahon said he was certain that Brigstocke had checked the records of the auction house, but had come up empty-handed. He gave Francesca an appraising look. He asked how she had happened to come across the essay.

“At the Warburg Institute,” she replied. She had a scholarship to study there for a year. She was, in fact, returning to London the next day.

“You know,” said Mahon, “I think you ought to talk to Brigstocke when you get back to London.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” said Francesca. “But I felt reluctant to call him without an introduction. I thought he might be offended by a student asking him questions.”

Mahon smiled. “You can tell him that I told you to call. By the way, where are you staying in London?”

“Radcliffe Road, near King’s Road and Fulham,” Francesca said.

“How lovely!” said Mahon. “We are neighbors! I live in Belgravia, in Cadogan Square. You must stop by for a visit and see my paintings. Here, let me give you my telephone number.” He called to the waiter to bring him a pen and a piece of paper and jotted down his number. He gave her the pen and asked that she write down hers.

Francesca couldn’t imagine actually summoning the courage to call Mahon. He’s just being kind, she told herself, he doesn’t really expect me to call.

Only later did it occur to her that she’d probably misunderstood. He hadn’t given her his number out of kindness, and he wasn’t taking a personal interest in her and her career. Sir Denis’s true interest in life was art. That was his chessboard, Francesca realized, and all his moves had significance. He’d given her his number because he thought that perhaps she might come across something else of interest to him. And if she did, he wanted to be the first one to hear about it.

19

F
RANCESCA RETURNED TO
L
ONDON AND TOOK UP HER STUDIES AT
the Warburg. In a spare moment, she looked up an address for the Ogilvy family in Scotland, the descendants of Constance Nisbet Hamilton, the last of the direct line of William Hamilton Nisbet. She wrote a letter asking for information about their collection of paintings, and inquiring whether, by chance, they could shed any light on the fate of
The Taking of Christ
by Honthorst. Luciano, in London for a weekend, corrected her English grammar. She tried calling Hugh Brigstocke at Sotheby’s. She got as far as a secretary and left a message. Several days passed without a response.

One evening, after a day at the Warburg library, she was washing her hair in the bathroom when she heard the telephone ring. Her roommate, Caterina, answered. A moment later Caterina appeared at the door and said, “It’s Denis Mahon; he wants to speak with you.”

Francesca stared at her. “Are you joking?” she said.

Caterina shook her head.

Francesca wrapped a towel around herself and went to the telephone.

The Englishman said brightly in his high voice, “I hope I am not disturbing you.”

“Oh no,” said Francesca, hair dripping on her shoulders. “Not at all.”

Mahon asked whether she had spoken to Brigstocke yet.

Francesca said that she had called Sotheby’s and left a message, but she had not heard back.

Mahon said he would give her Brigstocke’s home number. He would call Brigstocke himself, he added, and tell him to expect a call from Francesca. Mahon seemed in the mood to chat for a while. A seventeenth-century painting, a battle scene, had just come up for auction. Mahon felt certain it was by Poussin, a Baroque artist about whom he had written more than a dozen monographs. Others had raised questions about this attribution. Would Francesca, when she returned to Rome, mind checking a few documents in the Vatican library concerning this painting?

Francesca, clutching the towel around her, damp strands of hair on her shoulders, said she would be delighted to help.

Mahon spoke on for a while about Poussin. Francesca tried to call to mind paintings and dates, tried to think of intelligent comments to make on the subject of Poussin, on the old theoretical debate concerning line and color that had divided him and Rubens. For almost an hour she stood half naked and cold, trying to find a way to end the conversation without giving offense.

It was Mahon who finally brought the talk to a close, expressing his pleasure at chatting with her and making her promise to let him know if she happened to find anything interesting.