Francesca recalled that Longhi had made a particularly interesting deduction from one of the documents that Panofsky-Soergel had found in the Mattei archive. The document was dated February 1, 1802, and it concerned the sale of six Mattei paintings to a rich Scotsman named William Hamilton Nisbet. The first painting on the list was called The Imprisonment of Christ, and it was attributed to one “Gherardo della Notte”—Gerard of the Night. Longhi recognized this as the Roman nickname of Gerard van Honthorst, a Dutch artist who had come to Rome in 1612, two years after Caravaggio’s death. Honthorst had stayed in Rome for eight years, earning a living by imitating the style—a shadowy scene illuminated by a single light—that Caravaggio had made famous.
The attribution of this painting to Honthorst had struck Longhi as curious. For one thing, he knew of no Honthorst painting of that subject, and he had a vast and encyclopedic memory for art. But Caravaggio, wrote Longhi, had painted just such a work for Ciriaco Mattei. Longhi had never seen the original—the painting, he pointed out, had been lost long ago. But he knew it almost as well as if he had seen it. He’d read a detailed description of the painting written in 1672 by an art critic named Giovan Pietro Bellori. A description so lucid, so precise, Longhi wrote, “that it would enable me to recognize the painting at first sight, were fortune to allow me to encounter it.”
Pietro Bellori had seen Caravaggio’s original more than three centuries earlier, in the Mattei palazzo. “Judas lays his hand on the shoulder of the Lord after the kiss,” Bellori had written, “and a soldier in full armor extends his arm and his ironclad hand to the chest of the Lord who stands patiently and humbly with his arms crossed before him; behind, St. John is seen fleeing with outstretched arms.” Bellori had criticized Caravaggio for his “excessive naturalism,” yet he had admired the realistic touches in this painting: “Caravaggio even imitated the rust on the armor of the soldier whose head is covered by a helmet so that only his profile can be seen; behind him, a lantern is raised and one can distinguish two more heads of armed men.”
Longhi had read that description while just a boy and it had stayed vividly in his mind ever since. He had recognized a copy of the painting—“weak and lifeless,” he called it—at the shop of a dealer in antiques named Tass in London, on Brompton Road. That was in the 1930s, when Longhi had been forty years old. Since then he had come across several other copies, but even the best of them did not possess the spark, the vitality, that he knew he would see when he finally came across the original. Back then, he expected it would turn up in his lifetime.
Francesca imagined Longhi reading Gerda Panofsky-Soergel’s article. He had written his critique of her in 1969, when he was seventy-nine years old, and he had died the next year. From everything Francesca had heard about him, he had been a thoroughly unpleasant man, given to grudges and malicious comments about colleagues. But he was a brilliant scholar. In his later years, thought Francesca, he’d probably given up hope of finding Caravaggio’s original picture. And then, by chance, he had come across that single line about the sale of a painting by Honthorst to a Scotsman. His pulse must have quickened. Was it not possible, Longhi speculated in his critique of Panofsky-Soergel, that the painting had been mislabeled? And that the Scotsman, Hamilton Nisbet, had actually purchased the lost painting by Caravaggio? In which case, Longhi surmised, the original Taking of Christ was likely somewhere in the British Isles, possibly still in the unwitting possession of Hamilton Nisbet’s descendants, or perhaps hanging in obscurity in some small parish church.
To Francesca, this inspired deduction was a perfect illustration of Longhi’s genius as an art historian. From the smallest of clues—one line in a two-hundred-year-old document—he had started to unravel, without moving from his chair, the mystery of a missing Caravaggio.
Or so it seemed. Twenty years had passed since Longhi had written that brief article, and no one had found the painting yet. It was possible, thought Francesca, that Longhi had been wrong, that Hamilton Nisbet had bought some other painting, not the one by Caravaggio. But Longhi clearly hadn’t thought so. And, of course, he’d found fault with Panofsky-Soergel for not having made the same deduction.
IN ROME THE NEXT MORNING, LAURA CALLED CORREALE AND TOLD him they’d had some success in Recanati.
“Lauretta cara!” he exclaimed over the telephone. “Tell me all about it.”
Laura gave him a report of the payments to Caravaggio. Correale wanted to arrange a meeting at his apartment that evening so they could inform Rosalia Varoli-Piazza, the art historian working on the project, of their findings.
At home, Francesca prepared herself to call Professor Calvesi at his office at the University of Rome. She felt shy about calling him. He was a renowned and widely published scholar, regarded in his world with respect and, as with all people who wield influence and power, with fear. Among students, he comported himself with an icy detachment that warned against intrusion. He was Francesca’s thesis adviser—in name, at least. She’d met him face-to-face only a few times, always briefly, and always in the company of others. On one of those occasions she’d had to seek his approval for the subject of her undergraduate thesis. A younger professor had escorted her into Calvesi’s office, where Francesca had stammered out a few words, heart beating in her throat. Calvesi had approved her project with a perfunctory nod. Later, when they passed each other in the hall and she smiled at him, his look told her that he could not quite place her.
Francesca rehearsed a brief account of the Recanati payments, took a few deep breaths, and dialed the number. The telephone rang in his office for two minutes, but no one responded. She looked up his home number, dialed again, and this time got an answering machine. But as she began to leave a message, a series of beeps cut her off. Either the machine was full or it was broken. That afternoon, she tried again, with the same result.
Later that day she met Laura at the library in the Piazza Venezia. Laura suggested they check on the prices Caravaggio had been paid for other paintings, to see how they corresponded to Ciriaco’s payments. They looked up a contract Caravaggio had signed on September 24, 1600—a contract found by Denis Mahon in the Archivio di Stato—in which Caravaggio agreed to paint two pictures for a wealthy Vatican official in a chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. The patron, one Tiberio Cerasi, had stipulated a painting depicting the martyrdom of St. Peter and another of the conversion of Paul. The contract called for Caravaggio to deliver the paintings within eight months for a payment of four hundred scudi for both pictures. Each measured about ten palmi by six, or seven feet by five and a half.
This seemed to accord with the one hundred twenty-five scudi that Ciriaco had paid for The Taking of Christ, and the one hundred fifty scudi for The Supper at Emmaus. The price of a painting was often based on its size, and both Mattei paintings, measuring around eight palmi by six, were smaller than the ones in Santa Maria del Popolo.
The St. John owned by Ciriaco was the smallest of the three, and it depicted just a single figure. To Francesca and Laura, it seemed reasonable to infer that Ciriaco’s payment of sixty scudi for an unspecified work might have been for the St. John. Perhaps even the second payment of twenty-five scudi was also for that painting.
10
CORREALE GREETED FRANCESCA AND LAURA AT THE DOOR OF HIS apartment on Via Fracassini with open arms and a big smile.
“My dear girls!” he exclaimed. “You’ve found something important for me! I want to hear all about it.”
The living room of Correale’s apartment had now become a library dedicated to Caravaggio. Books and articles on the painter covered every surface. The smoke from Correale’s cigars already hung thickly in the air. Both the art historian Rosalia Varoli and Paola Sannucci, the restorer, awaited the report from Recanati.
Correale wanted to know all the details about the archive and the Marchesa. Francesca and Laura took turns telling him, and he laughed and clapped his hands and swore delightedly. Rosalia Varoli understood immediately the importan
ce of the payments and the dates. These findings, she said, would create a huge stir in the art world. For years scholars had been debating and disagreeing about the precise dates of Caravaggio’s early paintings, and now they had indisputable evidence for at least two of them, The Taking of Christ and The Supper at Emmaus.
Correale, however, grew a little perturbed. “So, then,” he said, “there was no specific payment for the St. John?”
“We couldn’t find anything in Ciriaco’s account book,” said Laura.
“Are you certain?” asked Correale. “Could you have missed it?”
“Well, it’s possible, but I don’t think we did. We looked carefully.”
“But in this basement with such terrible lighting! And you were there for such a short time!”
“We need to go back. There are many other things to look at, but we wanted to show you what we’d found as soon as possible.”
“Of course, of course!” exclaimed Correale. “You did an excellent job, but we have to check again to make certain.”
They discussed the two payments of sixty and twenty-five scudi that Ciriaco had made to Caravaggio without specifying the reason. Rosalia Varoli speculated that one of the sums—the twenty-five scudi—might have been for the St. John, and the sixty scudi for another unknown painting, perhaps The Incredulity of St. Thomas, which Baglione claimed that Ciriaco had owned. Correale acknowledged this possibility. A pity that history could not be more precise. He would have preferred to have an explicit citation for the St. John.
But he was only mildly disappointed, and he quickly got over it. The discoveries in the Recanati archive, he understood, had become the most important aspect of his St. John project. “Che colpo tremendo!” he exclaimed at the end of the evening, beaming at the two young women. “I didn’t expect that you would find something this important.”
And then Correale said, “Of course, we must keep this absolutely secret. No one else must know about it until the exhibition. It will come as a revelation!”
Both Francesca and Laura thought at that instant about Professor Calvesi. They hadn’t yet spoken to Calvesi, and neither was about to mention just then their efforts to contact the professor.
After they left Correale’s apartment that night, they discussed the dilemma.
“I still think we ought to tell Calvesi,” said Francesca.
“Correale will be furious if he finds out,” replied Laura.
“But Calvesi is our professor; we owe it to him. And he’s writing his book about Caravaggio—he should have this information. Correale will see that we had an obligation.” Francesca paused for a moment, and then added: “I don’t think Correale will be that angry.”
“I think he will.”
11
FRANCESCA MADE ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO GET IN TOUCH WITH Calvesi. She called his house, and this time the message machine worked. She spoke to the machine, trying to keep her message brief. The moment she uttered Caravaggio’s name in connection with the Recanati payments, she heard the phone at the other end being picked up and Calvesi’s voice.
“Payments to Caravaggio?” Calvesi said.
“Yes,” replied Francesca. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Who is this, please?” Calvesi asked her.
Francesca explained: one of his graduate students.
“Ah, yes, Francesca! Of course,” said Calvesi. “Certainly I want to know about this. You must come over as soon as possible. This afternoon?”
Francesca and Laura met in the Campo dei Fiori half an hour before their appointment with Calvesi. He lived nearby, on the Via dei Pettinari, an ancient narrow street that dated back to the days of the Roman empire. They both felt nervous about seeing the professor. They calmed themselves by eating gelato and rehearsing their presentation.
At the door, Calvesi greeted them with a brief smile and remembered both of their names. He was in his early sixties, white hair neatly trimmed, dressed in a cardigan and corduroy pants. At the university he always wore professorial tweeds and carried himself with an air of stern preoccupation. But now, at the door to his house, he seemed to Francesca much less forbidding, perhaps even a little self-conscious.
He led them into his apartment. They would talk in his library, he told them. They followed him through a series of rooms, spacious and well-appointed, with subdued lighting, Oriental rugs, and an abundance of art, almost all of it contemporary paintings and sculptures. He and his wife had lived in this apartment for more than thirty years, he told them. The library was large, two stories in height, with a modern wooden staircase that went up to a mezzanine. The shelves extended from floor to ceiling, all neatly ordered, a collection of tens of thousands of books and journals that the professor had amassed in his long career as an art historian.
Calvesi was not given to small talk, and this made him seem aloof. In her anxiety, Francesca tended to talk, making comments about his collection of art, about the library—stupidly, she thought later, as if she were chattering at a cocktail party, as if she were playing the role, as a boyfriend had once accused her, of the dumb blonde, although she was neither blond nor dumb. For her part, Laura adopted a strategy of respectful silence.
In the library, Calvesi sat in a large leather chair and directed the two young women to the couch. He crossed his arms and cleared his throat. At that moment, Francesca realized—she couldn’t say exactly what it was that brought her to this realization—that Calvesi was not deliberately aloof, but rather shy. Perhaps it was the way he’d cleared his throat, or the movement of his eyes, which never quite met hers. It shocked her momentarily to think that a man of his stature, of his achievements, could actually be shy.
They told him briefly about Correale’s St. John project and how that had led them to the Recanati archive. Calvesi listened attentively, nodding now and then, and when they described the account books of Ciriaco, Francesca could see his interest sharpen. He made no interruption, but leaned forward in his chair. They brought out their notes to show him the entries they had copied, and he took them in hand and studied them carefully.
“This,” he said slowly, “is a very important discovery. It puts everything about these years of Caravaggio into focus. Now we have a chronology that is indisputable.”
As he talked about the significance of the entries and the dates, he stood and began pacing, growing flushed and more excited than Francesca had ever seen him. He was in the grip, thought Francesca, of the Caravaggio disease. She and Laura were smiling broadly, happy that they had made their professor so happy.
Calvesi told them he was in the final stages of correcting the page proofs of his book about Caravaggio, called Le realtà del Caravaggio. It was too late, he said, to insert this information in the body of the text, but he wanted to mention it in the introduction. Of course, he would give them full credit for the discovery.
And then he said they must publish these findings, the payments and the dates, in a responsible journal such as Storia dell’Arte as soon as possible.
Laura said, “Well, Correale has asked us to keep it secret until the St. John exhibition.”
Calvesi shook his head. “If other people know about this, there will be talk, rumors. It’s inevitable. Once you find something like this, it is impossible to keep quiet. Someone else might publish it first and take the credit. It has happened to me before.”
They resisted, but not for long. Calvesi convinced them it was not just in their own interests, but in the interest of art history. “Correale should not ask such a thing of you. It is too important for him to keep for his own purposes.”
By the end of the meeting, Calvesi had helped them decide on a strategy. They would publish first in a monthly art journal, Art e Dossier, a brief article dealing only with the two named paintings, The Taking of Christ and The Supper at Emmaus. They wouldn’t mention the St. John, which was Correale’s primary interest. After the exhibition, they would work on a longer, more thorough essay for Storia dell’Arte, which came out
only four times a year.
Calvesi walked them to the door and congratulated them warmly. They promised to keep in touch with him and to inform him of any new discoveries when they returned to the Recanati archive.
They left Calvesi’s apartment and walked together down Via dei Pettinari to the Tiber River, to the Ponte Sisto. It was dusk in Rome. Overhead the swallows of spring circled and pirouetted high in the sky and the last rays of the sun bathed the church domes of the city in a golden light. They both felt excited by Calvesi’s reaction. In the small and insular world that mattered to art historians, they really had achieved something. Neither of them felt like telling Correale that they had talked to Professor Calvesi. They would delay that moment of reckoning until it was absolutely unavoidable.
12
FRANCESCA ARRIVED AT THE DORIA PAMPHILI PALAZZO ON A Monday morning in late April, a day when the picture gallery was closed to the public. Correale had arranged for the technical examination of the Doria St. John on that day, and he wanted all of his staff present. Two weeks earlier he had subjected the Capitoline painting, the presumed original by Caravaggio, to its examination. Francesca and Laura had been in Recanati and had missed that event. Francesca hadn’t minded. She didn’t find the scientific side of art history—paint analysis and X rays—very interesting.
By the time she walked in, the Doria painting had already been taken down from its customary place and moved to a table in a large room just off the main gallery. The windows in the room were shuttered, the corners in shadow. A weak light came from the chandelier overhead. Technicians wearing white lab coats brought in various pieces of equipment, including a portable X-ray machine and a device the size of a handheld video camera that would scan the painting with infrared light. They set up powerful lamps on portable metal stands around the table. All in all, the scene looked like a makeshift operating room.
The Lost Painting Page 6