by Alan Bennett
Blunt No, Ma’am.
HMQ Oh. Well, I must be on my way. Not, I think, a wasted afternoon. One has touched upon art, learned a little iconography, and something of fakes and forgery. Facts not chat. Of course, had I been opening the swimming bath I would have picked up one or two facts there: the pumping system; the filter process; the precautions against infectious diseases of the feet. All facts. One never knows when they may come in handy.
Be careful how you go up the ladder, Sir Anthony. One could have a nasty fall.
Blunt Ma’am.
HMQ Mr Phillips. (HMQ exits left.)
Phillips She seems quite on the ball.
Blunt Oh, yes.
Phillips The furniture, the pictures. I thought it was all horses.
Colin enters left.
Colin What the hell was madam doing here? What happened to the swimming bath?
Phillips There was a leak.
Colin I bet that made her shirty. They like their routine.
Blunt Strange about the Royal Family. They ask you a great deal but tell you very little.
Colin What were you talking about?
Blunt I was talking about art. I’m not sure that she was. Come on, let’s get this bloody picture down.
Blunt watches as Colin takes down the Triple Portrait and replaces it with the Annunciation. As Colin carries off the Triple Portrait the Palace set disappears and Blunt, pointer in hand, is once more found lecturing at the Courtauld Institute.
And should we compare these two paintings it is plain straightaway that they do not compare – at any rate in terms of quality. One, the Allegory of Prudence, (Slide of the Allegory of Prudence [Figure 3]) wholly authentic, Titian at the height of his powers, the other (Slide of the Triple Portrait [Figure 2]) a hotchpotch, a studio job, Titian’s hand possibly to be detected in the striking central figure but nowhere else. But let us leave quality and authenticity aside while I direct your attention to two of the personages depicted in the paintings.
A composite slide with Titian’s son from the Allegory of Prudence on the left and the third man from the Triple Portrait on the right (Figure 4.
On the left, Titian’s son Orazio Vecelli as he appears in the Allegory of Prudence. No doubt about him or his identity and rather a bruiser he looks, like one of those extravagant villains in an early Chaplin film. On the right, altogether more civilized, if not so well painted, is this gentleman.
Younger, perhaps, and with a beard which has not yet achieved its full tropical luxuriance, but with the same eyes, the same nose, surely this is the same man. Titian’s son also. The identification has never been made, and I make it now only tentatively and, I hasten to say, to no larger purpose, because even if correct I cannot say it helps to solve the riddle of this picture – if indeed it is a riddle worth solving. But riddle there undoubtedly is as I shall show you. Let us look at the painting as it was when it first turns up in the collection of Charles I some three hundred and fifty years ago. Catalogued as Titian and a Venetian Senator, you will note that it then contained only two figures.
Slide of the Triple Portrait before cleaning (Figure 1).
When I was appointed Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, I had the painting cleaned, and the presence of the mysterious gentleman on the right was revealed.
Slide of the Triple Portrait after cleaning (Figure 2.
So, having started with two men, we now have a third man. And that is how the picture looks at the moment. But that is only how it looks. Because in addition to being cleaned, I also had the picture X-rayed. And the X-ray revealed a fourth man.
Slide of an X-ray photograph of the Triple Portrait.*
And that was not the end of it either, for if we rotate the X-ray we find behind the original pair and the third and fourth man the rather more substantial figure of a fifth man.
Slide of the X-ray rotated.
The fifth man, you will doubtless be relieved to learn, is the last of the sitters lurking in this somewhat over- populated canvas. Who all these figures are and who painted them we do not know. It may be that the third man is indeed Titian’s son, but even so that does not help us identify the fourth man or the fifth. And why, you’re entitled to ask, does it matter? This is not an important picture, just a murky corner of sixteenth-century art history that wants clearing up but won’t be. It matters, I suggest to you, as a warning.
Slide of the Triple Portrait (Figure 2).
This painting is a riddle, and this and similar riddles are quests one can pursue for years; their solution is one of the functions of the art historian. But it is only one of his functions. Art history is seldom thought of as a hazardous profession. But a life spent teasing out riddles of this kind carries its own risks … a barrenness of outlook, a pedantry that verges on the obsessive, and a farewell to common sense; the rule of the hobby horse. Because, though the solution might add to our appreciation of this painting, paintings, we must never forget, are not there primarily to be solved. A great painting will still elude us, as art will always elude exposition.
The transition from lecture hall to Blunt’s room begins as the light grows on Chubb, in raincoat. He picks up a paper from Blunt’s desk and reads it.
Chubb A long time ago when I first started, I thought… or thought that I thought… that art was in the front line. I used to review then. I was the art critic of The Spectator … and I sang the praises of realism from Rembrandt to Rivera, deplored Picasso and abstraction … inaccessible to the people, I suppose. What none of us, I suppose, realized then was that the people would mean the public to the extent it does today.
Blunt enters. He is in full evening dress with the ribbons and medals of his various orders and decorations. He carries a bottle of whisky and two glasses.
What’s this?
Blunt My speech. The Academy Dinner.
Chubb I hadn’t planned on calling. I saw your light was on.
Blunt Yes. I suppose it’s what you’d call a function. Chubb Who was there?
Blunt Oh, everybody. Including your boss. We chatted. Do you not get invited to occasions like that?
Chubb No.
Blunt You should.
Chubb I’d feel a bit lost.
Blunt Oh, I don’t think so. They were all there.
Chubb Who?
Blunt The great and the good. Everybody on your list. Your little list.
Chubb Anyway, I don’t have the clothes.
Blunt Clothes are the least of it. Your wife would like it. Plenty to goggle at. And in the absence of the public one can see the art. Drink?
Chubb Thank you. I came to give you a warning. There is a time coming, soon, when your anonymity will cease to be in any practical sense useful.
Blunt Yes, yes, yes.
Chubb You must understand that your situation does not improve with time. More and more questions are being asked. The wolves, if you like, are getting closer. We may have to throw you off our sledge now. The consequences will be embarrassing, and not only for you. For us too. It will be painful. You will be the object of scrutiny, explanations sought after, your history gone into. You will be named. Attributed.
Blunt And as a fake I shall, of course, excite more interest than the genuine article.
Chubb There is someone else. Someone behind you all. All the evidence points to it.
Blunt The evidence! Once upon a time, when Berenson began his pioneer work of listing and attributing the paintings of the Italian Renaissance, he would sometimes come across groups of works in which he detected a family resemblance. They pointed to the existence of artists to whom he could not give a name. And there was one, a group of drawings, that resembled – but were not – the work of Botticelli. So he called the putative author of these drawings Amico di Sandro – the friend of Botticelli. But as the work of attribution progressed, Berenson came to see that these drawings were actually the early work of the Florentine painter, Filippino Lippi. There was no Amico di Sandro. He had been invented to fit the evidence, but
he did not exist.
Chubb It’s funny you should mention Berenson. I’ve just got on to him. Fascinating chap. Only wasn’t there another group of paintings he was puzzled about? Of the Mother and Child? Same situation, they resembled one another in style but he couldn’t put a name to the artist. The one element they all had in common was that the Christ child wasn’t portrayed as the usual torpid, overweight infant but as a real, live wriggling baby. So this process of attribution called into being a painter Berenson called the Maestro del Bambino Vispo … the painter of the wriggling baby. I’ve not got very far in my studies in art history, of course, and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but that attribution … the Maestro del Bambino Vispo still stands. He did exist.
Blunt Yes. That’s right. He did. But whether your man existed, or still exists, is a different matter. But very good. You might have made an art historian.
Chubb Yes? Did I miss my way?
Blunt Not really. Both our professions carry the same risks, after all … a barrenness of outlook, a pedantry that verges on the obsessive, a farewell to commonsense, the rule of the hobby horse. You with your hobby horse, me with mine.
Chubb punches up the X-ray of the fifth man.
Chubb Who are they all?
Blunt Oh no, not more photographs. (He looks round at the screen.) I’m sorry. I thought they were yours, not mine. When I was in the security service art used to be a haven, you know. A refuge. In the silly, knowing jargon of the spy story, a safe house. Not so safe now. Everybody’s into art.
Chubb Including me.
Blunt Still, I think it will last my time. But who are they all? (Blunt switches the slide off.) I don’t know that it matters. Behind them lurk other presences, other hands. A whole gallery of possibilities. The real Titian an Allegory of Prudence. The false one an Allegory of Supposition. It is never-ending.
Chubb and Blunt sit looking at one another for a long moment before the lights fade.
* As reproduced in the Burlington Magazine, vol. 100, 1958.
Author biography
Alan Bennett first appeared on the stage in 1960 as one of the authors and performers of the revue Beyond the Fringe. His stage plays include Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus, The Old Country and The Lady in the Van, and he has written many television plays, notably A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Woman of No Importance and the series of monologues Talking Heads. An adaptation of his television play, An Englishman Abroad, was paired with A Question of Attribution in the double-bill Single Spies, first produced at the National Theatre in 1988. This was followed in 1990 by his adaptation of The Wind in the Willows and in 1991 by The Madness of George III.
His most recent play, The History Boys, won the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards for Best Play, The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and The South Bank Award. Alan Bennett’s latest collection of prose, Untold Stories, was published in 2005 by Faber and Faber and Profile Books.
by the same author
PLAYS ONE
(Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus, Enjoy)
PLAYS TWO
(Kafka’s Dick, The Insurance Man, The Old Country,
An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution)
THE LADY IN THE VAN
OFFICE SUITE
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
THE HISTORY BOYS
television plays
ME, I’M AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
(A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Visit from Miss Prothero,
Me, I’m Afraid of Virgina Woolf, Green Forms,
The Old Crowd, Afternoon Off)
ROLLING HOME
(One Fine Day, All Day on the Sands, Our Winnie, Rolling Home,
Marks, Say Something Happened, Intensive Care)
TALKING HEADS
screenplays
A PRIVATE FUNCTION
(The Old Crowd, A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears,
102 Boulevard Haussmann, The Madness of King George)
THE HISTORY BOYS
autobiography
THE LADY IN THE VAN
WRITING HOME
UNTOLD STORIES
fiction
THREE STORIES
(The Laying on of Hands, The Clothes They Stood Up In,
Father! Father! Burning Bright)
Copyright
This collection first published in 1998
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2009
All rights reserved
This collection © Alan Bennett, 1998
Kafka’s Dick © Forelake Ltd, 1987
The Insurance Man © Forelake Ltd, 1987
The Old Country © Alan Bennett, 1978
An Englishman Abroad © Alan Bennett, 1989
A Question of Attribution © Alan Bennett, 1989
Author’s Notes © Alan Bennett, 1987, 1989
(reprinted from Two Kafka Plays and Single Spies)
Alan Bennett is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights whatsoever in this work, amateur or professional, are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever including performance rights must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to United Agents Ltd, 12-26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE. Amateur applications for permission to perform, etc, must be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, to Samuel French Ltd., 52 Fitzroy Street, London, W1P 6JR. No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained.
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 978—0—571—25071—4 [epub edition]