by James Becker
“Those remind me of a kind of expanded fleur-de-lis design,” he said. “You know, the Prince of Wales’s feathers and all that.”
“Does that help?” Robin asked.
“No. Of course not. I was just pointing it out.”
“Apart from that possibly suspect observation, do you notice anything else about it?”
Mallory stared at the painting for about half a minute, then shook his head.
“One very obvious problem for us is that it’s stuck inside a heavy sealed wood-and-glass frame that looks to me as if it’s screwed to the wall. That means our chances of getting a look at the back of it are virtually nil, at least without lifting it off the wall and taking the frame to pieces, which we’d probably be stopped from doing pretty quickly. Oh, and the shape of the entire image is a bit lopsided, as if the wood panel was originally slightly bigger than we see here today. Apart from those two pretty obvious points, nothing really leaps out at me. So, what have you seen that I haven’t?”
“It’s not something I’ve actually seen,” Robin said, almost hesitantly. “It’s more a sort of impression I’ve formed. A couple of impressions, actually.”
“Go on.”
“Tell me what you think he’s feeling. That man in the painting, I mean.”
Mallory stared intently at the image, then shook his head.
“I’m no art historian,” he said, “and the style of the painting is really quite primitive, but if you wanted a one-word answer—”
“That would be good,” Robin said.
“Then I suppose I’d have to say he looks surprised.”
“Bravo. That’s exactly what I mean. Most portraits, even in the days when this was probably painted—the twelfth or thirteenth century, something like that—were posed. The subject would look composed. More to the point, he or she would definitely have their mouth closed, not least because dental hygiene in those days was virtually nonexistent, and a lot of people had probably lost most or all of their teeth by the time they reached adulthood. An open mouth was definitely not a good look.”
“So why hasn’t he got his mouth closed?”
“There’s one obvious reason that occurs to me, and I’ll tell you my idea in a minute. And it ties up with the surprised expression on his face. It looks almost as if someone’s just stabbed him unexpectedly in the back. In fact, it’s almost more a look of shock than one of surprise. But there’s something else that’s odd about it, and that’s his eyes.”
Mallory looked back at the painted image and then shook his head.
“They look normal enough to me,” he said, “apart from being half-closed. In fact,” he added, “I suppose that’s a bit odd. If he’d been surprised by something, surely you would expect him to have his eyes wide open?”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Robin said, “but you do have a point. No, what I was looking at was where the man in the painting was looking. Which is straight at the two of us, and that’s unusual.”
Mallory looked uncomprehending.
“I don’t follow.”
“Artistic tradition and unwritten rules. That’s what I mean. Over a quarter of a millennium after the likely date of this image, in about the middle of the sixteenth century, Titian was working in Venice. While he was there, he painted a famous picture of Venus, a nude, that appalled the Catholic Church.”
“I thought nudes were a common subject for artists and sculptors, and had been since way back in the time of the ancient Greeks. The men in most of the early statues wore a fig leaf or nothing at all, and the women usually had a bit of cloth, some part of a garment, covering their interesting bits.”
“They were,” Robin agreed, “and they did, but that wasn’t the point. What really incensed the Vatican was the fact that in Titian’s work the nude model was looking straight out of the painting at the viewer. That established an obvious connection between the viewer and the model. She was lying naked on a couch in a pose that was certainly provocative for its time, and she was looking at you. That’s what the church couldn’t handle. Up till then, both women and men had been painted naked, but they were always doing other things and not looking at the viewer of the painting. So with those works it was as if the viewer was just watching a scene, only acting as a spectator and taking no part in what was happening. Titian’s painting changed all that. It was almost as if the woman in the picture was inviting you inside, in both senses of that word.”
“So, you mean this is anomalous, a piece of art that’s out of place in terms of its content because of the date it was probably painted. Is that what you’re saying?”
Robin nodded.
“It’s definitely anomalous, but there is one possible reason that would explain what we’re looking at, the face with the open mouth and half-closed eyes. I think the artist of this work painted exactly what he saw, and what he was looking at wasn’t the figure of a man posing for a painting. In fact, it wasn’t a figure at all, which explains why there’s no sign of the subject’s neck or shoulders, or any other part of his body. I think he was painting the head of a man who had just been decapitated. When you die, your eyes don’t close and your mouth could well drop open, because all muscle control is instantly lost. He just painted what he saw in front of him.”
That stunned Mallory.
“I’d never thought of that,” he admitted after a few moments, “but that does makes sense. And it would certainly explain the surprised look on his face. He’s surprised because he’s dead. That also means that whoever this painting represents, he had to have been an important man.”
“An important man to the Templars, certainly,” Robin said, “and that does at least suggest who it might be. Though there is one particular problem with that.”
“You’re right. There is. You’re obviously talking about John the Baptist,” Mallory replied. “Perhaps the most important man ever to be beheaded, or at least the one that almost everybody knows about. According to the legends, John had criticized Herod Antipas for marrying Herodias, the former wife of his—Herod’s—brother, and had been imprisoned as a result. Herodias was furious about this rebuke, and demanded John’s execution, but Herod refused. Then her daughter, Salome, danced in front of Herod and so entranced him that he offered her anything she wanted as a reward. Salome asked her mother, Herodias, what she should request, and Herodias told her to demand the head of the Baptist on a silver platter. Herod reluctantly agreed.
“Like most of the stuff in the Bible, there are a lot of problems and contradictions with this, and there are several different versions of the story. But it’s been quite well established that the Templars were Johannite in their beliefs: they worshipped John the Baptist, not Jesus Christ. In fact, one of the accusations leveled at the Templars by their Dominican inquisitors was that they were forced to deny Christ, and spit and trample on the cross as a part of their initiation ceremony when they joined the order.
“According to a few of the surviving testimonies from those dark days, some of the Templars agreed that they did do this, but they claimed this was so that they would be prepared and able to exhibit virulent anti-Christian behavior in front of their Muslim enemies if they were ever captured and endure it with their faith still intact, and there may well have been some truth in that. Verbally or physically denying Christ wouldn’t have been easy for anyone in those days, and particularly not for a member of an order of warrior knights dedicated to Christianity, so it could have been a kind of preparation for what could happen to them. On the other hand, because they were Johannites, Christ would definitely not have been a religious figure of any particular importance to them.”
“I didn’t know they worshipped the Baptist. Why did they?”
“Possibly because of something else that’s an obvious and unresolved anomaly. If Jesus Christ genuinely was the son of God, by definition He would have been the most important man ever to wa
lk on the surface of this planet. But if that were the case, how could John have baptized Him? That would mean that John was morally and religiously His superior. Logically, Christ should have been the one administering the baptism to John. And it’s not just the Templars who thought that. The Mandaeans of southern Iraq believed exactly the same thing for a slightly different reason. They revered John and condemned Jesus as a false prophet, a person who was entrusted with certain religious teachings by John and then perverted them for his own ends. And I think there are a handful of other groups scattered about the world that believe something similar as well.”
“So, do you really think that this is a painting of the severed head of John the Baptist?” Robin asked. “Done from life—or rather from death—I mean?”
Mallory grinned at her.
“As you hinted a couple of minutes ago, there’s a very obvious date problem if it is. John the Baptist, assuming he was a real historical figure at all, which is by no means certain, died in the first half of the first century AD. This picture dates from well over a thousand years after that, if the radiocarbon dating of the wood is accurate, and it almost certainly is, because it’s such a well-established technique. So the short answer has to be no. But what it could be is an accurate copy of an original painting that was done at the time of John’s death. Maybe the Templars held the original artwork somewhere, and just had copies of it painted for each of their commanderies and preceptories, where it could be revered and even worshipped, just as in a Christian church the congregation worships the crucified Christ. They’re both icons or idols, just different people.
“In fact,” he went on, warming to the idea, “that could tie up with what little we think we know about Templar ceremonies. They were supposed to worship a disembodied head, an idol they called Baphomet, and that’s a name that doesn’t sound all that different to Baptist, actually, at least in English. So perhaps that is what this image displays. Maybe this is the Baphomet image for the Templar establishment here in Templecombe. This could be what they worshipped, in which case it would certainly have originally been on display here in the church, probably somewhere near the altar. It’s come home, so to speak, after about seven hundred years. It’s just in the wrong position in the building, and now it’s an unusual piece of decorative art, not an object of veneration.”
“In that case,” Robin said, “we definitely need to see the back of the wooden panel, just in case there is something written on it.”
34
Templecombe, Somerset
Mallory glanced over toward the altar, where the group of obvious tourists appeared to be preparing to leave, some members already starting to drift away toward the door. A couple of minutes later, the last of them left the building, and as they did so, the rector walked over to where Robin and Mallory were standing.
He was a tall, spare man, wearing a dark suit that hung loosely from his narrow shoulders. The black shirt and clerical collar both looked several sizes too big for him, and his neck protruded from the shirt in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a tortoise’s head extending from its shell, an impression somehow reinforced by his prominent Adam’s apple. His thin face was topped with a sparse thatch of graying hair, his forehead underlined by a pair of impressively bushy gray eyebrows.
“I really need to close up quite soon,” he said, “because I have other appointments elsewhere today. Do you have any questions I can help you with?”
“It’s not so much a question,” Robin said, giving him the full benefit of her disarming smile, “more like a request.”
“Try me,” he replied. “My name’s George Unwin, and I’m the rector here. And you are?”
“I’m Robin Jessop. I buy and sell old books, not that I’m here to do that today. And this is David Mallory, a good friend.”
“Welcome to my church, both of you. A request, you said?”
Robin nodded.
“I know it’s slightly unusual, but we’re both very interested in this old painting and we wondered if it would be possible to lift it off the wall so that we could examine its reverse, the back of the wooden panel.”
The rector’s eyebrows rose in perfect synchronization, and a look of bemusement crossed his face.
“I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the Head over the years,” he replied, “and there are a couple of things that have always interested me about it. Things that suggest that perhaps the painting was originally on display somewhere, most probably even here in the church, though I can’t prove that, obviously. And I’ve had a few odd requests from visitors, as you’d expect, but never that. May I ask why you would possibly want to do such a thing?”
“We think there could be an inscription or something on the back of the wood panel that could help date it, and perhaps even give a clue to the identity of the subject.”
Unwin glanced at Mallory, who so far hadn’t said a word to him, then shifted his gaze back to Robin.
“No,” he said simply. “I’m sorry, but you can’t do that. The painting is fragile enough as it is, and I can’t allow anything to be done to it that would jeopardize it in any way. And, besides, it would be pointless.”
“Why pointless?” Mallory asked.
Unwin shook his head.
“The Head wasn’t just stuck in that frame and hung on the wall,” he said. “Obviously it was examined very carefully before that was done, and I can assure you that the reverse of the panel is absolutely unmarked.”
Robin’s face fell, but Mallory just looked irritated.
“I don’t know where this theory of yours came from,” Unwin went on, “but I can assure you that it’s completely wrong. And I can prove it.”
“How?” Robin asked the obvious question.
“I have high-resolution photographs of both sides of the panel that were taken before it was placed in the case. In fact, I keep a set of those pictures here in the church to show people who want to study the Head. Getting decent photographs of it is difficult because of reflections on the glass in front of it. Mind you, most visitors are usually only interested in the face itself, not the back of the panel. But if you follow me I’ll show you.”
“Hang on a minute,” Mallory interrupted. “You said you thought the Head might at one time have been displayed here in the church. What made you think that?”
“It’s not the actual Head per se,” Unwin replied, “more the condition of the wood and what the marks on it might suggest.”
“You mean the keyhole and the marks left by hinges?” Robin suggested.
Unwin looked slightly surprised.
“You have done your research,” he said. “Yes, exactly that. One popular theory is that the wooden panel might just have been cobbled into use as the door of some domestic cupboard, in a house somewhere here in the village, but to me that seems pretty unlikely. I’m quite certain that even the most uneducated and uncultured person would have been able to recognize the painting as something special, even if they had no idea of its history or purpose. Not that we actually know anything very much about it, either, even today, but you know what I mean.”
“So, what do you think happened to it?” Mallory asked.
“This is only my opinion”—Unwin sounded almost embarrassed—“and not one that’s shared by many—or even any—of my ecclesiastical colleagues, iconography still being something of a controversial subject in the Church. But I’ve never quite understood why it’s considered perfectly normal to have a picture or a statue of Christ dying in agony on the cross but not an image of Him as he would have appeared in life. And there’s another factor that reinforces my opinion. This church was constructed by the Knights Templar, as I’m sure you already know, and it’s quite well established that their tradition was to not display a halo in paintings of Jesus, so it’s most probably a Templar image.”
“So, you think this is a picture of Jesus?” Robin asked. “It
doesn’t look much like the conventional images of Him that we’ve got used to.”
“Obviously I can’t know for sure, but I believe it’s at least a possibility, though the absence of a halo is a potential problem if the painting wasn’t owned or commissioned by the Templars. Don’t forget that the classic image of Jesus, a handsome bearded man with long hair, that we now have is a fairly late development, probably dating from the medieval period or thereabouts. The earliest paintings were based on the handful of contemporary verbal descriptions of Christ, as a man with an entirely different appearance—short, squat, and almost ugly—and they are much closer in appearance to this portrait. So, to answer your question, yes, I think this could quite easily be a medieval copy, probably Templar, of a very early portrait of Jesus.”
“But what about the hinges and the lock—or the keyhole, I should say?”
Unwin smiled at Robin.
“This might sound a bit unusual, but I suspect that at one point the painting was mounted in this church, probably somewhere near the altar, where it could be seen by the congregation, and most likely covering a shallow cupboard where items of some value were stored, perhaps some of the church silver, for example. That would explain both the hinges and the lock. While the cupboard was closed it would display the face of our savior, perhaps as a more authentic representation than most of the other images we have become familiar with. And that would also seem to me to be a far more likely location for the painted panel than the front of some villager’s pot cupboard or something similar. Whatever its history, and whoever it’s supposed to represent, I think the painting is very obviously religious rather than secular in concept and execution.”
That certainly piqued Mallory’s interest.
“That does make sense,” he said. “Have you any idea where that cupboard might have been located? And why the painting then ended up in the roof of a village outhouse?”