Leonardo's Lost Princess

by Peter Silverman

  Having once lived in Munich for several years, visiting museums replete with works of the Nazarene school, I was sufficiently familiar with it to know that this portrait did not belong among its works. It was simply not in the spirit of the Nazarenes. In particular, there was no religious symbolism or pious significance to the work. To me, it was not at all reminiscent of the nineteenth-century German painters. That determination had been made by just one man, Fran¸ois Borne, Christie’s resident expert for Old Master drawings, and to this day there has been no explanation from Borne or from Christie’s of how this attribution came to be. I would love to sit across a table from Borne and hear his reasoning, but I seriously doubt that this will ever happen.

  If the lady in profile was not the work of a nineteenth-century German artist, then by whose hand was it? That was less clear. Although I recognized some characteristic Leonardo touches, the “L-word” didn’t even spring to my mind. First, that would have been too far-fetched. The portrait was, after all, catalogued by Christie’s, one of the world’s leading auction houses, and it was logical to assume that the house had done due diligence. I was ignorant of the provenance (the record of the artwork’s history) and the technical examination that had surely occurred. I had a healthy respect for Christie’s experts.

  By the time I arrived New York for the Old Masters auction in January 1998, I had looked at the catalog image of the portrait many times. The first thing I wanted to do was see the real thing for myself. I headed over to Christie’s to take a look. In the showroom, I gave it close scrutiny, and I have to say, somewhat to my surprise, it was everything I might have hoped for. On the spot I decided to place a bid for double the minimum estimate.

  I didn’t plan to attend the auction itself. I make it a principle not to be seen bidding in an auction room. You never know who might be inclined to bid against you, just for spite—or because they think you may know something they don’t. I am more comfortable with anonymity.

  Christie’s auctions are the ultimate insider’s game, but often Christie’s makes news in the mainstream press, especially when there is something unique on the block. There is a vicarious thrill to be had by the masses—and anyone can visit the auction house and see remarkable works of art, as well as artifacts, jewelry, clothing, musical instruments, and many other items of value. The auction can spark tremendous media attention, especially when there is something awe-inspiring to be had. In 1994, Bill Gates purchased Leonardo’s Codex Leicester—a collection of scientific notes and drawings—for more than $30 million, and to this day, when it is not being shown at exhibitions, he keeps it in his personal library at his estate near Seattle. The purchase created a huge stir.

  A different 1998 Christie’s auction would make big news for the $71.5 million sale of a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But my focus was on the portrait of a young woman that I believed to be misattributed. It wasn’t unheard of. Art authenticating is not an exact science but relies on the ability to fit together many connecting pieces. I often found that when my colleagues and I made mistakes, it was usually the result of listening too uncritically to others’ opinions, reflected in auction-catalog entries, expert treatises, and just plain hearsay in the salesrooms. I always tried to abide by the philosophy of a colleague who once advised, “Trust your eyes and not your ears.”

  I wish I had taken that advice in 1998. At the auction I lost my nerve, or at least my resolve. I was not feeling flush enough to punt—as they call it in the trade—for more than $17,000. The winning bidder, whose identity was unknown to me, paid the hammer price of $19,000; with Christie’s commission, the total was $22,850. I lost out, but over the years I would sometimes think about the portrait and wonder if it would ever resurface. I had that gnawing, uncomfortable gut feeling that I’d mucked up big-time. My lovely lady was gone forever. Or so I thought.

  Kathy had often remarked on my obsession with the portrait, pressing me to explain what it was about the one that got away that so enraptured me. I could not fully explain my feeling of being captivated, or what it was about the portrait that made it so unforgettable, except to say that it was incredibly lovely, and had immediately presented me with a mystery: when was it really drawn, and by whom? I never abandoned my initial sense that it was perhaps a true Renaissance work.

  I had often imagined the exquisite piece permanently exiled to an ordinary living room wall somewhere in North America or Europe or Asia, lost forever to the world at large. Now here it was, close enough that I could reach out and touch it. It was for sale, and most amazing of all, after so many years, the label did not vary much from the original Christie’s attribution, reading:

  A carefully rendered study, this portrait is based on a number of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and may have been made by a German artist studying in Italy.

  I circled the table nervously, mumbling with agitation. “My God, I don’t believe it. There you are, my lost lady,” I whispered. “Where have you been all this time? Has Kate been keeping you in a drawer?” I felt my heart thumping in my chest, and certainly the melodrama was warranted, but I tried to slow my breathing and look calm and casual.

  If anything, the portrait drew me in more fiercely than it had before. Once again, I noted that it was beyond credibility that a nineteenth-century plagiarist would be capable of such a sensitive, fully realized rendering. The young woman seemed alive and breathing, every feature perfect. Her mouth was serene, her lips gently parted with the subtlest hint of expression, but her eye in profile was radiant with emotion. The formality of the portrait could not mask her blushing youth. She was exquisite. I could easily have stood gazing at the drawing for hours, but I knew the moment required decisive action.

  Leaning toward Kathy so I wouldn’t be heard, I said quietly, “I missed it the first time—not again.”

  I glanced over to where Kate Ganz was chatting with a customer. I knew I must not appear to be too excited or she’d guess I was onto something. Finally, I murmured, “Here goes,” to Kathy and beckoned the dealer over.

  Ganz is an attractive woman in her early sixties, with a dynamic personality and a sharp edge that could sometimes make her seem insensitive and caustic. She is one of half a dozen highly respected dealers of works on paper. She also has an impressive professional pedigree. Her parents, Victor and Sally Ganz, were acclaimed collectors of twentieth-century art, and her father was a vice president and trustee of the Whitney Museum.

  I guessed that she must have shown the drawing to some of her contacts, which included top curators and others in the museum world. It’s what I would have done. It’s what any collector or dealer would have done. Apparently, none of them gave it a second glance. I thought about it and found it not so surprising. I had often seen a similar dynamic in evaluating art. The eye of the beholder could be clouded by the conventional wisdom about an artist’s modus operandi, the norms of an era, and the collective opinions of experts. In this case I suspected their eyes had betrayed them.

  Kate came over to where we were standing. “Peter, Kathy,” she greeted us coolly, kissing our cheeks. We chatted politely for a few minutes about our lives—Kate had recently remarried and now lived primarily in Los Angeles—and finally I asked, “Kate, how much for this portrait?”

  Kate consulted a price list and named a figure nearly identical to what she’d paid at Christie’s in 1998.

  I frowned deliberately, still contemplating the work. I rocked back and forth on my heels, mimicking indecision. “I don’t know,” I said carefully. I felt a moment of trepidation, fearing that accepting Kate’s price without haggling would make her suspicious. “Can you give me a discount?” I asked, worrying that I was already showing too much interest. Kate might see through me. After all, we’d known each other for nearly thirty years. But she wanted to sell the portrait, and after a bit of discussion, she finally agreed to 10 percent off the listed price, for a total of $19,000.

  It was customary to let collectors with long-standing reputations walk awa
y with their purchases before paying, and I fully expected Kate to say, “Take it now and send me the money.”

  But in spite of having known me for so long, she suddenly became brusquely businesslike. “You know, I can’t let you have it until you pay me,” she said, surprising me. Maybe that was her way, or maybe she was already hedging, deliberately placing obstacles in my path because something was telling her not to sell.

  I felt a small clutch of panic. This was a crucial moment, and so much could go wrong. “Fine,” I said to Kate. “I am making the purchase on behalf of a wealthy collector, and I’m sure the arrangements will be no problem.” Kate walked away, and I pulled Kathy aside. “We have to have the money wired immediately,” I said urgently. “If I don’t seal the deal today, anything could happen. Another collector might express interest. Kate might get suspicious and call off the sale. I can’t walk out of here without the portrait.”

  It was agreed that Kathy would leave to make arrangements for the payment while I hung around the gallery, nibbling on bits of cheese, sipping wine, and trying not to look too obvious. I spent a terrifying hour that way, never straying far from the table that held my prize. Every time a visitor paused to look at the portrait, my stomach lurched.

  Finally, Kathy returned, having successfully managed the transaction.

  By the time we left the gallery with the wrapped portrait, we were feeling giddy from the adventure. “That drawing had your name on it, Peter!” Kathy exclaimed. We laughed excitedly, hardly noticing the cold.

  I held the painting to my chest and quickened my pace, searching for a taxi. We were staying with a friend—a former model I’d met during my early years at the Hotel Stella in Paris—only a few blocks away, but I did not want to spend a single unnecessary minute on the street. I felt very nervous and very vulnerable, as though I were holding a treasure.

  On the flight back to Europe the following evening, I calculated my next moves. I was a bit agitated, but I kept reminding myself that it was a work of art, not the crown jewels. Mostly I was anticipating the revelations that lay ahead, whatever they might be. I enjoyed this kind of research, for there was always a one-in-a-million chance that something magnificent would be revealed.

  I have always thought that there is more than a little madness in the soul of a collector. Collecting is about passion, money, ego, and being the best. It does not take place solely in the hallowed corridors of galleries and auction houses but also, literally, on the street, and it involves trolling the back alleys—street markets, private dealers, small galleries—as well as the front lines, seeing not only with the eye but also with the heart and the soul. I have tried to understand each work of art from within, without allowing greed to undermine my judgment. This instinct was developed over many years in the field.

  However, I also knew that a serious collector must not be afraid to stray from consensus and be independent, original, and hungry for finds. Miracles do happen! One must follow one’s own instincts. For me, the hunt was the thing, and I enjoyed taking it off the beaten path. I often rose before dawn on Fridays to attend “dealer’s day” at Porte de Clignancourt, the largest and most famous flea market in Paris. Its origins date back two centuries to when poverty-stricken men and women would search Paris refuse at night and sell their small discoveries at market the next day.

  In modern times, Porte de Clignancourt had become a huge venue for art sales. On Fridays, hundreds of dealers who had combed country auctions, Paris consignment shops, and private collections brought their findings. For small dealers, turnover is the name of the game, and at Porte de Clignancourt they hoped to quickly buy, sell, and buy again, with a quick and decent profit in between, if possible. There were pitfalls, of course: the fakes, the stolen items, and the works that looked good at first glance but turned out to be third-rate imitations.

  The flea market opened at 6 a.m., and it was often still dark when I arrived. I carried a flashlight and tried to concentrate and focus through sleepy eyes. The early hour, the coldness of my feet, or any other discomfort did not deter me. I was immersed in the hunt, intoxicated by the sheer possibility of it. In the back of every collector’s mind is always the hope of stumbling upon a great discovery. Whispered stories filled the early morning air and became elevated to folklore among the collectors digging for buried treasure in the dawn’s early light.

  There was the tale of the filthy picture, found in rubble, black with soot and years of grime, purchased on a whim for $10,000, which when cleaned was revealed to be a Brueghel worth $1 million; or the equestrian bronze, purchased for $5,000 and thought to be nineteenth century, which was actually by Antico, one of the masters of the Renaissance, and was later sold to an American museum in excess of $5 million. There was the little sketchbook of one hundred drawings brought to a dealer who didn’t know what they were; he paid a few thousand dollars, sold them for triple the price, and thought he’d made a great bargain. Then the dealer who subsequently bought the drawings recognized the hand of the great fifteenth-century Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio, and the sketches were ultimately valued at nearly $10 million. The lesson: never be complacent, never assume, always be on your toes. I lived and breathed hope.

  After spending four hours at the flea market, I usually headed off to the Paris auction rooms to view the upcoming sales. Almost every day there were at least a dozen different salesrooms filled with new works, often from private homes where the owners had died, had moved away, or needed quick cash. I understood that searching for treasures in these secondary venues was a long-shot venture.

  However, the formal auctions did not normally yield too much, either. Most of the catalog works had been studied and pawed over by countless experts before they ever made it to a show. And even though the experts seldom made mistakes, there was always that one-in-a-million miss—like the discovery of a Frans Hals portrait, originally estimated at $30,000, purchased by a smart French dealer for more than $500,000 and resold less than two years later at a major London auction house for close to £10 million; or the very large painting of a biblical battle scene, miscatalogued as a relatively minor Roman painter by a London auction house, that was later proved to be a major early work of the great seventeenth-century French Master Nicolas Poussin and was subsequently sold to the Jerusalem Museum for more than £7 million. There was, I knew, always that chance.

  2

  Who Is She?

  The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

  —Leonardo da Vinci

  Soon after Kathy and I returned to Paris with our prize, we were fortunate to have a houseguest who could shed some light on the portrait. At eighty-two, Mina Gregori was considered the doyenne of art history, the unrivaled expert on Caravaggio as well as on the Florentine. She had been a professor of medieval and modern art history at the University of Florence for more than fifty years, had written several books, and counted among her students many of the leading art historians.

  We had become close friends with Mina over the years, and she frequently stayed with us when she visited Paris. Mina was a sharp-witted, keen-eyed bundle of energy, and we often laughed about how she ran circles around us at expos and fairs, never seeming to tire.

  In early March, Mina visited us while she was in Paris, accompanied by Catherine Goguel, a mutual friend and a Louvre drawing specialist. The occasion was a birthday fete in Mina’s honor. With trepidation, I showed them the portrait and watched closely as they studied it, murmuring softly, their faces showing keen interest but no emotion.

  “It’s of extraordinary quality,” Mina said finally, and Catherine nodded in agreement, adding, “I believe it is fifteenth century.”

  “You can clear that up by having it carbon-dated, and also by having a good restorer look at it,” Mina proposed. “If you like, there are clues to authorship.”

  “Please go on,” I said eagerly.

  “It appears to be by a left-handed artist,” Catherine said significantly. Mina then pointed out a detail th
at only a person with her flawless eye and expertise would have noted. “This drawing shows dual influences: Florentine in its delicate beauty and Lombard in the costume and braid, or coazzone, which were typical of a court lady of the late fifteenth century,” she said. “Of course, the most obvious artist to come to mind is Leonardo, one of the few artists who made the transition from Florentine to Milanese. I would start with his circle.”

  Inspired by Mina’s enthusiasm, I began a lengthy investigation. Always in the back of my mind was the faint hope that I had achieved the dream of every collector: to bring to the world a previously undiscovered Master work. I also had the portrait reviewed by Caroline Corrigan, a highly respected restorer for museums and dealers. After examining the work under a microscope, she concluded it was fifteenth century, noting that it had been very well restored, including recently. “I wouldn’t touch it further,” she advised.1

  For a year, I carefully conducted my study, taking little definitive action. The portrait sat in a place of honor in our living room and gave Kathy and me much pleasure, which of course is what art is supposed to do.

  I showed photo transparencies to a number of people I respected, operating on my belief that the portrait was from the fifteenth century, not the nineteenth. The Leonardo influence was unmistakable, and I considered that it might be the work of a student. I began to do serious research on artists, including Leonardo’s disciples in Florence and Milan during the late fifteenth century. I also considered that it might be Florentine, perhaps by Domenico Ghirlandaio, who had been in the same workshop as Leonardo.

  The great artists of the Renaissance were noted for their workshops of talented apprentices and pupils. Art history is full of speculation about the role of student hands in the signature works of the Masters. Leonardo himself began at the age of fourteen as an apprentice to Verrocchio.